Solstice Blessings wayfarers, meanderers, pagans;
My sonnet diptych (a reflection of the same image, but after another manner) to Persephone…
i. Persephone, sprung bright from root and bone,
Green-blooded bride of dawn, the frost undone,
You lift the earth’s dark mouth to honeyed sun
And teach the buried heart to beat its own.
All winter knelt where your cold footsteps shone—
The fields lay tongueless, ash-lipped, overrun
By sleep’s black psalm—till from the understone
Your laughter split the seed and burned it young.
Now light uncoils its gold around your hair;
The sky learns blue when you return.
I love you as the furrow loves the flame,
As breath loves breath when thawed from nameless air:
Stay—though I know the dark will claim its turn,
The sun lives longer to raise your name.
ii. Persephone, antlered in the loam,
Red-handed queen of sprout and sacrament,
You rise when pollen on your lips, hell-scent
Now warm upon the thighs of leaf and stone.
All winter bowed before your absent throne;
The fields lay flayed and fasting, sacrament
Of frost and bone-song, till your footstep rent
The womb of earth and split the shell alone.
Now drums of light beat through the greening land;
The sun is slain and crowned within your gaze.
I love you as the plough loves blood and rain,
As mouths love gods who scorch them where they stand.
Go, when you must, to rot and starless ways—
We live because you die but soon will rise again.
DW ‘25 ☉♑
The Western Gate 
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