Eileithyia

Eileithyia, goddess of birth,
has seen much death.
Calliope says, consoling her,
that all is metaphor —
that birth and death
are so woven together
who can tell them apart?
The death-god is no poet.
Single-minded, almost pedantic,
"You take the metaphors,
I'll take the facts,' he says.
Eileithyia responds
with silence, feeling
the power inside her hands
which, again and again,
pull life from life,
slapping it into breath,
cradling it into comfort.
Through the turning point
of an afternoon, she walks
across a field of wheat —
a lake of fire — holding
at her centre the memory
of each lost, each future
life. She carries that
weight, that lightness,
into shadowed sunlight,
alive and herself
in the wholeness,
the brokenness,
of now, of here.