Pomegranates, and Persephone
If I were to be introduced to you for the first time, after meeting your eyes and finding what lay there, I may let my gaze fall discreetly to your neck… I don’t mean to, and I know that this may seem strange, but the neck is often where a piece of the soul is held. I am looking at your jewelry – the pieces you wear closest to your heart like a secret. It may tell me nothing – but so often it is a clue to a beautiful and intimate story.
Right now a brilliant citrine graces my neck – wrapped in silver and knotted on a leather thong. To me, it is the sun. It is life, purity of spirit. It is the dream of happiness, of lightening my anxiety, of keeping the suffocation of a long winter at bay. It is a wish, delicately balanced, poised to leap…
I have started to think about medallions and if I were to choose one, what would mine hold? I am not a Catholic, or any religion actually. My childhood was churchless , and my prayers were only poems spoken to myself. My alter can be a parkbench, my spiritual adviser a small child, or the love in a dog’s eye. So I let my mind wander… and was blessed with an image of a pomegranate – a section of leathery skin cut away to reveal the blood red seeds inside, And I saw the medallion it would make so clearly…oxidised darkly in sterling silver – a tiny deep garnet nestled in the depths.
Which made me think of pomegranates themselves – their textures, the round leathery weight of them, their taste – so bittersoursweet. But moreover their symbolism, and why I would choose such a symbol for myself right now. That when brought to task, my subconscious delivered this strange fruit …
Pomegranates have always meant Persephone to me – a journey to the darker aspects of the soul – of sensuality, power and submission, mystery, shadows – longings…a sinking into oneself, a surrender, deep introspection, an inventory of the soul, a winter coming on…
I suspect it may also have something to do with my thoughts on Lou, and the person that she was, and on muses in general. Of being adored – and the duality of attraction and repulsion, invitation and rejection that can ensue. That particular tension of longing and denial. I’m letting it simmer to see what it tells me.
Strangely enough, when G came home from the store today – a pomegranate was the first thing my hand connected with when it reached int the grocery bag. I pulled it forth in a mix of delight and surprise, exclaiming “How did you know!?” , which of course he hadn’t known really, and yet some part of him knew to buy a pomegranate today, when we never have them.
So… some sketches of pomegranates, and a draft of poems in process….:
three seeds
or was it four? caught
between my teeth, each one
a valentine bursting, your dark juices
staining my lips.
the taste of you lingers
on my tongue…
Persephone
pt. 1 -falling-
the price for one flower
plucked by my own hands-
the clouds yielded for one brief
moment to the sun, parted their voluptuous folds
to shiver a small kiss across it’s innocent
petals – their goosebumps pulling
my eye, commanding my fingers
take.
how could I know what
earthquakes would ensue, fingers
grasp the bending stalk, heavy with longing
the earth open beneath my toes, falling,
the heady scent of spent flowers, the flesh
crushed in alarm, the damp loam
pressed in my nostrils, how could I
know that the earth’s embrace was only a
shadow of what would
come