Global Marketing Makes Pomegranates Available Anywhere

       Let’s stop seeking refuge in the myth.
The pain of separation doesn’t ease

       by thinking of return. Like believing
the dead will be returned to us.

       What’s gone is gone. The difference
when the daughter comes back

       for a visit—briefly, distractedly—
the difference might have its little

       sweetnesses, a bowl of uneaten
pomegranates on the table,

       a white bowl on a white cloth,
anything to keep the dark away—

       but there we go with the myth
again. So seductive, so reassuring.

       The going and return of it.
The every-mother-lives-through-this

       of it. And even the blubbering
and self-pity dressed up for myth:

       a woman howling in a barren field.
The truth is there’s nothing grand

       or austerely beautiful about it. The smallest
part of the heart, where meanness and pettiness

       reside, that part swells, takes over,
crying, The ingratitude of it!

       And nine times out of ten—it’s
the season, they’re not fattening,

       the seeds really do look like jewels—
she buys pomegranates and eats them

       with the juice dribbling down her chin,
her fingers stained, the white cloth ruined

       but what does it matter since it’s only more
of the material we reluctantly learn won’t last.

Lynne Knight | Burning Need Burning Itself to Extinction
Mudlark Contents | Mudlark Chap No. 66 (2018)