After weeks in the incubator, my owl chick finally hatched from its shell

This week, poet and artist Frieda Hughes looks after an owl chick

OWL CHICK

Three days from the first musical note

Heard through a small, chipped hole

An owl chick will escape what has both fed and confined it. So,

This egg rocked, squeaking, as the first breach let in the outside air.

The incubator turned again. The day two bird-voice was louder,

As if complaining about its lack of progress

Through the same small hole, which had not become

The necessary undoing that would bisect the shell.

On day three the cries of the chick seemed to be begging;

Its birthday release was on the verge of expiry

As it dried out and would die in its calcium coffin.

With boiled water to unstick tissue-paper flesh,

And tweezers to pick around new bones

As fragile as glass threads and fingernails, to gently peel away

The brittle parts, I excavated. The shell bled.

Until there she was, limp in the palm of my hand.

As I write this, her ribs rise and fall, and her scanty tufts

Almost cover her indecency. Her flipper wing stubs ferry her forwards

And her eyes strain through closed lids as if seeing into her future,

Which is also mine, as she opens her beak for me to feed her.