Canticle of the Sky: Aventai – Julia Hart Shikano

April 16, 2026

overture

Throwing pebbles at a standing stone,
/ whack-thwack-crack,
I was a child below the hill
/ when a woman cried out from a boat.
She came ashore bent with child.
/ ey-heeeeyyha eh, I called, unheard.
She climbed an old stone platform,
/ salt-stiff from travel,
and grief struck through her knees.

vivace

She cried, father, mother, here I am,
/ lit by a light no mortal should carry.
Labor climbed through her past bearing,
/ dolphins turning in the bay, lions close.
Will I die?
/ Clouds reeled overhead.

grave

No one came, and I did not move.
/ Night howled into day, then howled again.
Her mouth split dry. Gold tracked down her face.
/ She lay so still I saw death enter by degrees.
No creature moved. The bay forgot its waves.
/ pappous, λάβε τὴν ἐμὴν πνοήν.
/ / Every creature heard
/ / and ached.

TAKE MY BREATH

The last wish of every child:
to find their mother in the wind,
to make a homeland of the breeze.

largo

Then mist took on the shape of a ruined man: Ouranos.
/ The air grew heavy.
/ / To breathe in was sorrow.
/ / To breathe out was iron.
/ / Every living chest burned.
/ He took her last breath in his hands
/ and pressed it back into her.

I felt the world break at the seam,
earth beating like a war drum.
/ Gaia hammered against Tartarus.
/ Cronus answered blow for blow.
/ 1 – 2 – 3 – 4
/ whooo-wo-whooo

Rain broke open and the ground convulsed.
/ He tore down a rainbow
/ and wrapped her in it.

The sun went down and rose again.
/ Each last breath came back as dance.

Ouranos would not leave.
/ Wind shifted. Birds wheeled.
/ / Too many fathers had failed.
/ / Maybe a grandfather wouldn’t,
/ / I hoped.
/ Gaia split the land from the sea,
/ / and it sailed there.
/ / The island had always known this rite.

For days every creature moved in agony.

She perished.
/ Then the sea broke open.
/ The nymphs came.

The broken power of Ouranos gathered,
/ world-splitting,
/ and the end bent near every living thing.

He sacrificed it there.
/ Two more suns crossed the sky that day,
/ and breath returned to her body.

andante

Then the gods arrived, severe with light.
/ Leto had been left inside a labor with no shore.
She turned toward Hera and gave up her pride.

Mercy.

/ / I felt the first laws above begin to bleed.
/ / The sky went hollow.
/ / One by one the stars bellowed, MERCY.
/ / The island burned among them.

Two children were born:
Artemis, Apollo.
/ Their hair burned with the fire of the two suns given.
Their light moved through their mother.
/ Every rock was bleached by it.
/ Palms sprang up around them.

allegro

Leto and the children went to Lycia.
/ At last I left the island.
When the boats came,
/ I told them of the land that folded
/ world into sky, sea, and stars,
/ of the mercy of a wandering god,
/ of Artemis and Apollo newly born.

Ouranos kissed both children on the brow
/ and left weather listening for their names.

I dreamed that one day
we would hunt for the stars
/ on the moon,
/ into the singing dark,
looking back at that island,
/ its breezes,
/ its labor.

It would take my breath.