Egg Meditation: A Prose Poem

Sometimes she would lie on the floor sort of meditating, gathering a kind of strength and also letting her mind drift. Often as she lay there, she would see a tree on a hill and then herself under the tree and then a sort of forcefield of energy radiating out from her in the shape of an egg. The egg, she could tell, was both protection and a field connecting her to the tree, the hill, everything else. She would breathe there in her egg, making it brighter and stronger, letting it make her brighter and stronger. But she knew she mustn’t hold too tightly to it, or to the idea of it, or think to much about it, or even talk about it later to others. Otherwise, she would separate herself from it and from the protection/connection it offered. And then up would float Veruca Salt, grasping for a golden egg, a little girl in white tights and yowl, transformed in her desire. And who wants to be Veruca? You relished her falling down that bad egg chute. You found yourself wanting her to suffer, even as the Oompa Loompas sang and gloated, gloated and sang. But, really, we’re all Veruca; we’re all the egg; we’re all the gloating Oompa Loompas. Have some compassion, she thought, still on the hill. Have some compassion for your own white tights; your own orange song; your own golden glow.