<persephone and the harp>

Persephone and the Harp

Persephone--daughter of the loving, stubborn Demeter, who was goddess of the earth's harvest and its fruit, and who refused to grant the earth such blessings when Persephone was not upon it; innocent, abducted bride of Hades and thus queen of those he damned; maiden of the Springtime forced to sit alongside her kidnapper, rapist husband while the earth endured six cold months every year--was once again above ground, on her way home from the underworld, led by Hermes, who was the messenger of the gods, god himself of a number of things, and inventor of the lyre, which was a harp. It was late in the evening that they were walking across the dead, cold earth and in the morning that followed, Persephone would be reunited with her mother and her mother would then feed the land and warm the air; what would be the first day of Springtime that year.

An hour into their journey, Hermes thrust his harp into Persephone's hands and told her to wait. "Wait by that tree, the tallest one, with the crooked teeth," Persephone was told by the lyrically-minded messenger. The pomegranates Hermes had stolen away from the underworld were not sitting well in his stomach, or maybe it was the guilt of eating the forbidden fruits upsetting him, for pomegranates were not allowed on the earth, for Hades needed something to lure people down into his fiery kingdom; most likely it was that he had eaten over 60 of the fruits. Whatever the cause, Hermes was now left with little choice but to leave Persephone unattended, bolt into the woods and relieve himself of his crime, once a bitter, sweet meal, now a bittersweet mess.

Persephone was anxious to get home, and waiting by a tree for Hermes to return was not enough to quell her nerves. Harp in hand, she climbed the tree, and sat. Overlooking the the dead land, the sleeping trees, the icy lake that would, incidentally, one day impregnate her, she plucked Hermes' harp.

Persephone plucked the harp and awoke the tree she was sitting in. She plucked--quite well, in fact--and her presence was made known to the earth. The tree she was sitting in told the tree it was standing beside, and that tree told the lake, which told some other trees and eventually word spread all the way to Persephone's mother.

With that, the moon grew full, so full that some mistook it for the sun, and the earth became green and alive. Persephone plucked on. She plucked to the awakening trees, the worms, the returning birds, the blossoms and the insects. She plucked to her mother and her mother's outstretched arms, which waited for her in a cabin half-way up Olympus. And she plucked to the seeds Hermes couldn't help but release, the ones that would grow into the earth's first pomegranate trees, no more would the underworld have control of the fruit; and she plucked to the fires of Hades, momentarily out of their reach as she was. The Springtime of that year, it is said, lasted four hours longer than it was supposed to.