Birth Caoineadh
by Julie Lynn
Nolva, tethered, digital photograph. Courtesy of the artist.
Birth Caoineadh
Julie Lynn | Jan 2025 | Issue 41
I.
You who have been born—listen,
for I will give you a moon to sing into the darkest places
where rock meets bone and spirit moves slow;
into the bright sunstrip between eyelids
where white is all color, and no color, and blue
is a present absence to weep for;
conjure for me the sets, the props—little green house,
pink bath towel, gleaming silver forceps
on a table wiped clean—put your body
there, by the window, and there, tugging the IV;
bring your imagined go-bag, all the food you won’t
eat, battery-operated candles to pray by the flicker of;
yes, listen, dear one who has passed between
stone and starshine through waters warm and honeyed,
for I have washed my feet
in willow-clean streams and stood
beneath wizened-silver poplar boughs and pulled
from the red earth of me a spirit, a body,
not yet one, on a cool May morning. I will
take you there, to the place that’s not a place
in a body not your own. I will take you.
II.
When Hercules, foolhardy hero that he is, receives orders
to enter the dark, he tips back his exquisite head and laughs
a roll of thunder.
No weapons, the pallbearers instruct. Only a body
as mortal as the snakes that slide their bellies down
the river-wet roots in search of the cold.
A priest weaves the tender sticks of poplar branches
into a circle, rests palms on Hercules’ blazing cheeks.
The leaves tremble silver-green in the daylight.
This will bring you home. A blessing.
III.
First, you must know the island.
Adrift in a small wooden boat, you see the ocean
laying before you like a jute carpet in the hall,
all knots pointing forward
to a tiny dot of land on the horizon. Whether
with dread or jubilee, you row, and think,
and grow, and plan—you are creating
this place, your companion. No one
travels there alone. Toss with me
onto the waves of your mind sweet-smelling
brine, soft sand, a bed big and plush enough
for your crest of a belly, cool drinks, chocolate cake,
constellations made known to you by your ancestors,
your friends, your elders. This island is yours,
and theirs, the sweet miracle explosion
of cells inside you. Can you
see it, dearest? Can you feel the sand like
a million whispered prayers? Keep it in your mind.
Return as often as you like. You know the way.
IV.
Water spills first in the little green house of morning,
puddles salt. You are coming. The rain I’ve dreamed
onto your pink brow mists and you, too,
are held in suspension, within
a pleasing dissonance that pulls you
towards a difficult resolution. Songbirds dart from tender nests
in the neighbor’s tree, and I hum your lullaby,
rub circles into my belly, but your limbs sink beyond
reach of my incoherent body. The hours crawl onto all fours
in a hospital bed that we adorn with branches,
artifacts, yarrow, golden against the poplar’s silver.
Night. Day. I quake earthshine, spit-fire gravy
from volcanic wondermoon, burst purple stars of capillaries
on skin as hard as rock, one two, one two,
twin contractions for the pair of us, then dead
sand, thick paste of blood in my legs
from a bolus of quiet. We toss a balloon
into the opening sky of me. I beg—Come into the world
the way you know how. The blinds split the night and the flower moon
spots our crashing form, a searchlight for your small body.
Our hearts beat trouble. Chart the stars to find me,
to find us, here, waiting, fearful, so fearful on the other side.
V.
Orpheus the singer, conjurer of strings, makes a cat’s cradle
of the Fates, descends with shaking voice.
Where are you? he calls into the dark, swimming
against the cold current. Here. Here. Here.
The opening is behind us now. There is no forward,
no back. Only down. And with luck, up.
VI.
Together, we enter a dark room, feet sweet
with poplar.
Sentinels line the shadows, their patient hands
laden with scepters, yarrow, drying leaves.
We curl. Uncurl. The avalanche inside us is upside down,
muffled. We, beneath.
Hands tacky with blood call us further below, dig
their metal talons to find us. We follow.
I feel your wreathed crown at the entrance to the dark.
The cleaving of us fills the growing space between
your wild swinging heart and mine.
A choir of alarm. The sentinels shrink
the circle around us, stretch thickly the thread.
I am certain of the way. I push through the musculature
of the earth to take us there. To pull you through.
VII.
When you are born, you are not a live thing. Thick
with purple, the ropes of us are cut
by others’ hands. I kiss the outside of you, the inside
of me, once, once—the hands take you
from my body. Have I brought you from the dark?
The sentinels dart like pond minnows between us,
wringing their decisions. Machines push light
into your blackened lungs, red into your blue
veins. I am told you cried out like a meadowlark
when at last the leaves turned green from silver
and you found your body from the open sky. I
do not know—I was left in the rubble,
in the dark room, the floor scattered
with empty steps, fistfuls of flowers, perfumed
branches, the whole of me weeping
for the absence of you, of you, of you.
VIII.
Later, hours later, your gentle father
eases me into a wheelchair, and a stone
slips from beneath me—charcoal, smooth,
a single slim white line cleaving one side
from the other. Mythology
rules that the space between the living
and the dead be guarded always
by the stiff shoulders of gods
and trees alike. We passed among them,
you and I, you clutching the newness of you,
I the ephemeral us, etched by some kindness
into a stone we both can hold over the buried earth.
IX.
Eurydice, child of the dark stone, follows the snakes
to the gates. Watches for the light to pry
its rose-tipped fingers through rock and boulder.
Somewhere beyond, a mouth twists into a kind
of song, strums her name into the gravel
like a boot’s heel.
But the earth, clay that it is, transfigures,
presses the air from bones, holds
the stillness.
To keep. Always.
X.
I turn and she is there on the sand,
smiling by the uneven line of the waves,
both hands resting on her stretching skin,
belly like a loaded gun. She tends
the rope that stretches between us
across the infinite miles, and I
trust her, trust the being
swimming in her body’s bowl—they
will be this place’s keepers, our keepers,
yours and mine. The rope dips
into the water in one place; it is
neither mine nor hers there, but we both
grasp tightly the rope, hold with reddened palms
the unmoving crystal of you, rocking blue
beneath us in a moment as still.
I clutch you to my chest, nod
across the vastness. She nods back and you
kick against her ribs. We, all of us, chart
these skies, etch rock into paper, murmur incantations.
She, forever with child. You a kind of triptych.
I turn to face the too-bright sun, shading your clear
blue eyes with the palm of my hand.
XI.
Oh bruised star, hear me.
We the birthers carry
small fires into this world.
We weep to watch them grow, keep
the embers close.
We whisper our breath to stoke the ghosts.
You were mine. Before you were the willow’s
and the snake’s, the cottonwood’s and the yarrow’s.
Oh living tremble of a heartbeat conceived, you were mine.
I tell the story that is ours.
Julie Lynn is a queer poet-storyteller and herbalist with roots in both the Sonoran Desert and the Willamette River Valley. Following in the tradition of confessional and mystic poetry as well as her ancestral Irish oral Caoineadh, Julie aims to make mystery of a world obsessed with making sense. Julie’s work has also been published in Cartridge Lit.