THEME: PERENNIAL

Two months ago we put out a prompt and a paragraph:

Here, and here again. Gone sometimes, but never forever. Oh, you again? Yeah, this again. We seem to be repeating ourselves. What a relief. What a bastard! What a bore.  With spring comes flowers waking, clothes stripping, sun staying.  The habits you crave and the snakes you can’t shake. What’s your reoccurring nightmare? The guarantees in life that comfort you? The second-generation irises that bloom each March in your grandmother’s garden. What more?

What more indeed. We thought, for sure, some poems about flowers. Maybe personal spring traditions. Right? But we were given falls and winters. The deaths that remain with us. The loves we perhaps should leave, but won’t. Or can’t. We were given flowers too, but ones kissed or wilting.

Perennial is that which is reoccurring. In ancient Greece the festival Hyacinthia was celebrated every early summer in honor of sun-god Apollo’s lost Spartan prince lover Hyacinthus. Over the course of 3 days, they mourned their dead, celebrated rebirth, and held reverence for the mysteries of it all. We now associate the perennial Hyacinth flower with spring. And yet it still holds within its petals a space for sorrow, which is reflected so much in our contributor’s pieces.

It is 62 degrees and sunny here in Nashville today. We are Hyacinth children, bending toward the sun, thanking the chthonic goddess of spring for returning from the land of the dead, yet again.

March 20th 2022
Spring Equinox
Nashville, TN