When She's Gone

I haven't posted for a while.  I've mostly been working on a piece that I began at Deena Metzger's Writers' Intensive and I'm still not sure where it's going.  But this morning, one of the SoulCollage® cards on my writing table caught my eye.  It's a card for Hades, god of the underworld.  I made it earlier this year in Redding when my friend Alexa and I led a SoulCollage® group together (it's really fun to get to work with other people's collected images).  With all of my focus on the Persephone story, I hadn't thought before then to make a card for Hades.  Here it is:

So, this morning as I was looking at the card, the words "Hades paces" popped into my mind, and then this poem followed.

Hades paces.

He doesn’t like it

when she’s gone.

It’s not that he envies

her summer reveries,

the company she keeps, 

or the blossoms and fruit of

the sunshine world.

No, he’s made

his comfort here

in the mist realm,

but he feels unsettled,

unbalanced, drained

without her.

The dead drift by

in their bland uniformity.

Maybe it's color

that he misses.

Maybe it’s the fragrance

of flowers she is always

wrapped in, exudes,

even here.

He drums his fingernails

on the cold slate table.

He paces.

This is what he misses,

here among the gray

and boring dead -

her aliveness,

her very life.