Do you think a mother bird mourns her eggs?
Begs her babies not to break
The perfect shell she strove to make?

Does her heart break, just a bit
when once her chicks are free of it?
When they choose not to stay
safe within, but break away?
The fragile shells, paper thin,
despite their beauty, in the bin?

I too made a shell. At least, I tried.
Kept my children safe inside.
I nurtured it, kept it protected,
took advice, tried to perfect it.
I feared an outside force might break it.
Made it as strong as I could make it.

‘Family’, I called this shell
I sometimes thought I’d made it well.

“Fool,” I think I hear you say, “Of course it’s meant to be this way.
Don’t you know it’s right and proper, every egg must come a cropper?
How else can children learn to fly, unless they’re free to touch the sky?
It’s not you, but them, decide
when time is right to go outside.”

This shell I make will surely fail
if it begins to seem a jail.
A way out with no smash or crack
might make it simpler to come back.
My family egg might withstand more,
if I can fit it with a door.