PersephoneShe usually calls for me in winter,
But this year, I did not hear
Until the earth was in bud.
It seemed strange
To turn toward that dark stare
To go down
When life was already celebrating
A return.

But when the Dark Goddess

demands a descent
You must go.
You must go down
To open more, pried open in your most closed places.
To let the darkness that lives there
Spill out onto the floor at your feet
Like blood,
And you must grieve
The loss of the hurt
You held so dear,
Before you can join the flowers.

Marilyn Owen
(copyright M. Owen)

Persephone's Feast Day

When all the names are gone
when there is nothing left
for memory to feed upon

Perhaps all the wastes
of love and time
ferment their healing,
here, in these nigrado depths,
becoming at last albedo
a white lily,
a crocus arising, new
life in the barren place
the medicine.

There is no valor in this

rooting among decomposing fragments
of so many lives.

I offer now bread,
red fruit, red wine
to Life

To the beautiful and strong,
those who speak and those who dance.
And to the inarticulate and the broken,
to those who are lost, to the hungry,
and to the fallen. To every transparent lover
wandering these gray bardos
in their solitude:

Come to the table, all.

Here is a rich conversation
harvested from the last living garden.
A dappled pear, an apple, a pomegranate.
A butterfly in its chrysalis, winged, moist,
the slow rebirth of color
deep in the depths of this dream

The wheat has new life in it yet
The blessing will still be given


Lauren Raine (2005)