For My First-Born, Dead Poem by Sheena Blackhall

390,000 babies were born
Along with you on that Saturday

I floated above the birthing bed
On pethidine wings
The scalpel opened my crack
Like a wizard's sleeve
The iron jaws of the forceps
Prized you out

After, I slept
A snapped guitar string
Bankrupt of energy, a stalled car

Oh, we were a pair!
Novice mother with novice son
All fingers and thumbs
You were perfect, bewildered, lovely
An unmarked page

Circumstances change.
I signed you into care
Made you a desert of storms
A pyre of possibilities
Trashed your trust

It was a give-a-way
Care-less…butterfingers
An heirloom dropped and smashed
Beyond care and repair

We were finding our way
Back to the loving times
When I opened that door

You were beached on the couch, alone
Curled like a dark prawn
Your skin like a swelling drum
As if your soul had been desperate to escape

That you had come to this!
40 summers old and not one taste of bliss
From a nearby syringe I heard the dragon hiss
Ochone mo chridhe,
No hug, no parting kiss
Flies buzzing on the edge of the abyss

Where is the hair shirt
The lash for self mortification?

The heavy portcullis of time
Dropped before I could atone

On your death-day the radio played
‘My Final Song'
‘Please won't you wait? Won't you stay?
At least until the sun goes down.'

The clouds ask, ‘Why are you still alive?
When your child has gone?
Your moon, your stars, your son
Your abandoned one?

I dream of a midnight pool
A drowning swan