BTT #48: Come Soft Snows

On By Lona GyntIn Poetry

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Come Soft Snows
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Come Soft Snows.
Let fall the hush
That renders Ceres still.
Hold fast yet
When time her sleeping silence keeps,
Beneath the whited hill.
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-Lona Gynt, January 1987
all rights reserved.

This poem will soon be available in the publication listed below  🙂

January 2020:

Three poems accepted to the annual anthology for Out Loud HSV (which stands for Huntsville, not for Herpes Simplex Virus)

Out Loud 2019 cover

“Walking the Dog on the Fairway at 9 pm”

“So you think you are better than Lady Macbeth”

“Come Soft Snows”

Available soon at this site:

http://outloudhsv.com/shop

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-Lona Gynt,  January 1984
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All rights reserved for text and pictures to Lona Gynt, November 2018.
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Posted for dVerse, Open Link Night (OLN), hosted by Mish.  Snow was on her mind.  Join us on the OLN poetry trail.  Dress warm.
Here is the link for OLN:
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Learn more about Ceres (Greek name is Demeter) and the change of seasons at the following link:
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Also.. Please read Merril’s Powerfully moving non-traditional Haibun on this mother/daughter
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ceres sad2_001
I did not know her when I wrote this poem thirty years ago…  but I dedicate this poem to my Real Life friend and Second Life daughter – Sophia.  We love you dear one, wise one.   “Hold fast yet…”
Recited at Out Loud Huntsville, Open Mic Night 10-27-19
delete soon

48 thoughts on “BTT #48: Come Soft Snows”

  1. Therisa Godwaldt

    But when Ceres wakes, spring and life comes to the land. Renewing the pact that Hades made, after her eating 6 pomegranates. Besides, I love the spring and fall times of southern Ontario, over the harsh heat of summer and bitter cold of winter.

    Lona, wish my poetry from so far back, was like your’s, readable and intelligent.

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    1. Thank you Therisa! And Hello! Yes I am not a fan of winter generally, but it does have its beauty and time for drifts of grief mixed with hope. I have always thought the Ceres/Demeter story was the most beautiful thing in all of Greco-Roman mythology. It is hidden, but the spring and life you speak of are also central characters in this poem. I am glad this poem has finally escaped my notebook. Thank you friend.

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  3. That is the beauty of winter: the silence and longing of what once was and what will be again. The union of Ceres and Proserpine, the birth of our Lord, the fields ripe with grain. And hey, like your poem, I’m a child of 1984’s winter as well:)

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    1. yay!!! that was a great winter then!!! 🙂
      I do love the hope that underlies the despair of Ceres’ waiting, but that hope somehow still does not make the grief and the suffering unreal, it is icy and vivid. Thank you Amaya. oh, and by the way, I want to say more about your Haibun on waiting… but I get choked up whenever I try. You are an honesty and a striving, with love as your imperative. This world indeed would have been worse without the winter of ’84.

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  6. Hope her sleeping silence, indeed. There was a new age philosopher David Spangler who wrote of seasonal turnings as festivals of transformation, fall to winter the innermost, a vast brooding silent pregnancy enwombing the next year. Ceres indeed. Celebrate the snow of her sleep. Know what you cannot see.

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  7. Oh, I love that image of Ceres with a pomegranate in her hand — it is a beautiful tribute to the mythical and the human in this tale.
    “Hold fast yet”: Indeed, that is the significant thing — I see and feel this cocoon of comfort and warmth biding its time beneath the white hill in your words. A lovely verse!

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    1. Thank you Jade, that is one of the kindest notices about the feelings I had when I scratched this out. I am so grateful that came across. Ceres was the one Olympian who was not an OlympiAn but who lived among the poor and mortal in compassion, I think her own suffering strengthened their feelings of connections to her.

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    1. It is really an ancient world “me too” moment with so many symmetries – Zeus and Hades conspiring to abduct Persephone for Hades, and then conspiring to keep her in the underworld, and I am inspired to hear versions of the ancient myth where winter was not just a passive withdrawal by Ceres, but an act of powerful resistance whereby the powerful were held (at least partially), to account. The sorrow of separation and hope for reunion remain the most poignant part of the myth for me. I am glad that you like this. Is your writing on this available on your site, I imagine it would be very interesting.

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