The egg drop is a sacred
ritual of initiation
for all high school physics students.

Twenty trains of thought try to generate
a capsule that will protect
the fragile skull of an unborn breakfast.

Try as they may,
chewed pencils tapping
their own scrambled skulls,
little do they know
of my master plan.

A warhead of egg sized proportion,
packed soft and tight with cotton, tissue, paper,
enclosing with its embrace
a cylindrical capsule of cardboard.
All rooted in gravel
from my driveway,
fresh picked that morning.

I even wrote on the tiny missile:
“Greetings From The Republic Of Alice”

After snickers and cheers and
gawks at the deaths of flimsy yoke heads
from an elevation of three stories high,

I placed my device in
the metal elevator and watched
it drop from the roof
out of the crates gaping mouth.

Like the fist out an anger god
it plummeted to the earth.
It not only crashed into
the school’s sidewalk, but po-goed
back up, trying
to save itself.

My classmates and teacher stared
with disbelief as
I pried the capsule open, to reveal
my unpunctured triumph.