Egg Keeper

This morning I had a dream I was standing next to a barren tree watching a hummingbird prune on a branch near my ear. She was dark dark green, the sky was falling. I watched her hop to a nest above my head, set upon two chopstick branches. It was a small bowl of grass and twigs, malleable and stretching whenever she moved like a knitted hat. She grew into a larger bird, of which kind I’m not sure, but she fit perfectly. I could see one giant white egg and a few smaller pebble-sized ones. Suddenly she stood up and stretched her long legs and wings, accidentally pushing the nest to the ground. I tried to catch it before it hit and managed to pillow it enough that none of the eggs were destroyed. But when I looked into the bowl, the eggs were covered in dust, rocks and ash. I dug around in the mess, picked up a small pink egg and felt its warmth on my fingers.

As I placed it back in the tree, the twigs and grass turned into a shiny polyester-type fabric with mesh stitches – like the inside of a rain coat. I couldn’t get the nest stable, it kept slipping off the branches, I even lost one egg in the process, so I found some string, looped it through the mesh and tied it like a hammock in higher branches, watching it swing. I never saw the bird again. I became her egg keeper.