The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

This was not one of those poems I had to read several times before I liked it, not one where somebody else had to point out its merits before I saw them. This one embedded itself in my mind when I read those words – “put out her hand and pulled down/ the French sound for apple.” Pomme. (As I write the foreign word my spellchecker underlines it in red, unwittingly giving emphasis to its color and emotion.)

I have never felt the need to rebel in the classical ways. I listen to records, not the radio, and the volume’s never turned up. I don’t like short skirts or dyed hair or flashy cars. I love my mother and try to avoid my father, so we all get along okay. But all the same, rebelling from one’s background is an inevitable part of anyone’s life. For everyone there’s a day when you realize you want to do things differently, you want to do things better.

The Persephone story has been interpreted a lot of different ways: a girl fallen into a confusing and dark world of depression, a rape, an explanation of the seasons, a daughter rebelling from her mother by running away, an initiation, a love story gone wrong. It’s a Greek myth of Demeter (Ceres in Latin), the earth goddess, and her daughter Persephone. One day as the maiden Persephone is playing in a field the earth opens up and Hades, god of the underworld, kidnaps her. She stays underground with him while her distraught mother searches in vain. Without the attention of the mother goddess, the earth becomes cold and desolate. Finally the king of the gods sends for Persephone to return to her mother. Before she goes, Hades gives the girl some pomegranate seeds and she eats them. Because she has eaten the food of the dead, Persephone by rights must stay in the underworld, but Demeter protests. A compromise is reached: She will stay with Hades as his queen for part of the year and spend the other part aboveground with her mother. Thus the seasons are formed, summer while Demeter is happy and winter while she is mourning for her lost daughter.

The story translates well to one about parents and children. Persephone spent her childhood in protected meadows filled with sunlight and wildflowers. She was a mama’s girl from the beginning and although she is obviously of marriageable age when the story takes place, she is described as a little girl would be. She screams in terror when Hades kidnaps her and only wants to return to her mother. Why, then, did she eat the pomegranate seeds? Look into her mind and you can see how she might have been yearning to be free of her world of innocence and chaperoning. It is only when Hades rapes her that she becomes a queen of the underworld and a goddess in her own right, not just Demeter’s daughter.

I see myself in Persephone, and I see the mother I will probably someday be. I know I pain my parents when I turn away from what they want me to say and do. I remember sitting in the living room telling my mother I didn’t want to go to church any more and watching her cry. I remember my father swearing in the car after I told him I didn’t care if I passed Mr. Brinson’s grammar quizzes. I don’t want to hurt them, but more I want to grow beyond them, to make my own life in my own way. We all have to find our own kingdoms or we stay Demeter’s daughter forever. I know that someday I, too, will be the pained mother in the poem helplessly watching my daughter run away from me. I will have tasted my own pomegranate and I will watch her take hers. I will remember these years of record players and silent love and I will remember their taste, ruby-red and acid-sweet.