Eggshell is a shade
cool as pitted milk-soft carapace
and searing as canker, rope
burn across yoked tongue. It strains
against the unspoken
inchoate
yet swelling
power to rupture
the membrane
that keeps us
separate
yet nested
together. Caution fails,
a crack forms,
unleashing the wind
now hissing across
this uncrossable divide.
—
Image Credit: Still life by Jo Bradney
Shannon E. Williams 
Nothing Is Too Small Not To Be Wondered About
The cricket doesn’t wonder
if there’s a heaven
or, if there is, if there’s room for him.
It’s fall. Romance is over. Still, he sings.
If he can, he enters a house
through the tiniest crack under the door.
Then the house grows colder.
He sings slower and slower.
Then, nothing.
This must mean something, I don’t know what.
But certainly it doesn’t mean
he hasn’t been an excellent cricket
all his life.
– Mary Oliver