paradísaregg

A profusion of eggs. A whole basket of them, hand-colored, delicate-seeming, but the old rag paper is deceptively sturdy. Pages of calm geometry, shapes speckled and tapered, eggs of guillemots razorbills plovers sandpipers gulls terns auks. A Guide to the Birds of Britain has been dismembered and its plates slid into individual mylar sleeves for individual sale. I want to buy them all, but I would no sooner buy the feathers of birds of paradise.