It seems that my two most recent poems have been inspired by a pomegranate. Last night I devoured one single handedly not sharing at all with my company. A few hours later, I was cursed (or blessed) with the incredible urge to write poem after poem and could barely process all the ideas coming out of every pore of my body. Of course, this urge to write could have been a result of the emotional state of mind I was in yesterday, but I prefer to believe that the fruit had some sort of power in helping me.
I love the feeling of historical richness that biting into a pomegranate brings to me. The first thing I associate with pomegranates is the Greek story of Hades and Persephone. When I was a young girl I became enthralled with Greek mythology, and the uniquely intertwining stories that always had some elements of tragedy within them. As a child I would read and reread the stories where a flawed character made a tragic error and urge them to change their actions. I thought that by doing this a character could at least once escape their seemingly inevitable fate. Alas, this never worked- Daedalus could warn Icarus all he wanted but his son would still fly too high. I could yell at the page at the top of my lungs but Pyramus would still assume Thisbe was dead. And no matter what instructions he was given, Orpheus would still give in to the temptation to look back at his beloved Eurydice.
In "Persephone and Hades", Persephone, daughter of Zeus and Demeter, was abducted by Hades and brought to live in the underworld. Persephone's mother, goddess of the earth, was so distraught by this that the earth became barren and the people living off it began to go hungry. Zeus was determined to fix this trouble and forced Hades to return Persephone to her mother. However, the Fates had a rule that whoever consumed food or drink in the underworld would be doomed to stay there for eternity. And before being released to Hermes, Persephone had eaten a few pomegranate seeds, and as a result would have to return to the underworld for a season each year; this explains why there are months that the earth is barren and why we have seasons.
In addition to being present in this popular myth, the pomegranate is a common symbol in other literature, art, and in religion. It is one of the oldest fruits known to man, and in Judaism it states that Eve consumed a pomegranate in the Garden of Eden. There are references to this fruit in Shakespeare, Homer, and Pliny, among others. It has been described as a symbol of friendship, fertility, and prosperity and also associated with the images of Christ and the Virgin Mary in Christianity. Also there are a few references to the pomegranate in the Quran as a fruit in paradise.
Here are the two poems I wrote last night. They may seem less artistic if you read them thinking that I only referenced the pomegranate because at this point I had a huge crimson stain on my pants. So, despite the intro forget that I even ate pomegranate last night!
"Pomegranate"
She was a very intelligent girl,
but when faced with you
could often forget that you, too,
are human and can feel and bleed
and are not all of the good things
in this life inside a single soul.
so naturally, when she cut into
the pomegranate, she forgot
that it was not just a sack filled with
minute beautiful treasures,
but a fruit which could leave her
with a crimson stain
(resistant to water just as you
seem to resist imperfection)
" I Would Say"
If you would give me a chance-
I would say all these things
that Float just beneath the surface
of my skin when I speak to you.
But:
Just as a single seed of the pomegranate
can burst-
leaving nothing but a hull of what was,
my soul seems to fly out of me when I face you-
leaving my mind and body thoroughly
without a master.
