© Penelope Bourk ....Februrary 2002

Birth control allowed the marriage

Full of fear of Birth as Death

to skirt the issue

for a decade,

though ultimately -- all children die.

Yet ignorance invites new knowing,

into doubt

Initiation comes –

as after an abortion or miscarriage

as dream

woman lying-in

chest bare

hair white as a wedding veil

raised, young yet, surprising

– I feel so much older than –

Our Lady waiting

her Ephesian breasts,

sudden as spring flowers

open.

Where is my child?

Our Lady wails.

Churn, belly, churn

Convulse and turn

The infant finds

No place to rest.

Trembling hierophant,

the inner nurse,

in white as witness glows.

Pregnancy expects

the sweet white warmth

of milk to flow,

as nectar from a blossom.

But - No – she cries –

as pain from swollen breast

explodes.

Dank curds extrude

Deep earthen smells.

Dark dugs ooze thick, cold, clotted blood and clay,

as when a mountainside heavy with spring showers

cleaves and the rusty mud slides,

Where but a moment lost ago

showed flowering.

Churn, belly, churn,

Convulse and turn

The mother finds

No place to rest

With child and so the two are lost.

Wizened as a body too long bathed,

tiny as the marsupial joey first ascending

from down under’s vaginal cave,

the infant soul

wavers up the hairline of the belly

toward the omphalic lip,

as from Will’s sick rose,

and slips –

Dive, Dive –

Deep in the slitted pouch,

nipples of Mortality latch on.

How could this worm

suckling a curdled flood

be Life’s sweetest gift?

To give or to receive?

How could a mother, any mother,

bear

to feed her infant

Death?

Churn, belly, churn

Convulse and turn

The child can find

No place to rest.

In a fit of compassion

for the paradox of mortal being

The Great Mother

Demeter once

mourning the unimagined

descent of her own divine

Daughter into Death,

found shelter at Eleusis.

And grateful, sought to save the infant of another

Mother, save her too from grief of knowing

Every child will one day die.

Demeter nursing at the hearth,

each night while mother sleeps,

dips the infant in the fire

to burn off dross

mortality.

Till one midnight mother wakes,

shrieking at the sight

-her infant son, Demophoon in flames-

She rips her son from the hands of the goddess,

One would save him dying.

Churn, belly, burn

Convulse and turn

The goddess finds

No place to rest.

Until again in dream we see Demeter’s face

and feel the goddess grip our feet

and hang us by the instep over flame

as her tears fall.

For still Demeter weeps and holds

Us each as dear Demophoon,

rebirthing breech the infant

Spirit, catching hold

of soles of souls immortal

longing to be borne.

Churn, belly, churn

Convulse and turn,

Her grasp still firm

The Goddess holds us

First to last

the lost, aborted, birthed

and the reborn.