Proserpere
Tara Avery
Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go,
and feel kindly in your heart towards me:
be not so exceedingly cast down
-- Homeric Hymn to Demeter
It is the waking time.
Ended, your long, pomegranate sleep.
Your lover’s bed empty
while at your mother’s side –
eyes still heavy, heart still heavy –
you watch the flowers bloom.
They are meant, you think, to be beautiful.
Drunk on scents of lilac and hyacinth
more potent than wine,
you grasp at memories, dreams.
You have already forgotten the timbre of his voice,
the color of his eyes.
And so, you wake.
It is the living time.
In your hair, roses. In your cheeks, roses.
Days stretch long under your mother’s watchful eye.
Body supple with health and color,
you are every day singing, dancing –
every day chaste kisses and honeyed dreams –
every day forgetting.
At night, though, at night and in your secret garden
your deft fingers breed nightshade, belladonna, oleander:
gifts for a man you think –
you almost remember –
might like such things.
And so, you live.
It is the sleeping time.
Days grow short. Tempers.
Your mother watches the darkness.
You watch her.
And when you slip your hand –
too cool, too pale – into hers,
you see a ghost reflected in her eyes.
Walking a path of marigolds, the girl goes.
She does not look back.
Her woman’s body already longing
for a bed of orchids; for tangled limbs and tousled hair;
for hands and heat and lips and lust.
And so, you sleep.
It is the waking time.