Pomegranate Poetics: The Process of Bringing a Poem to Life

I am fairly diligent on my responses to the prompts at ReadWritePoem.Org’s weekly “Get Your Poem On” exercise. Sometimes the prompts annoy me or confound me but I do them, as a practice.

 

This week’s prompt annoyed me on multiple levels.

 

It seems so innocuous: the Pomegranate photo.

 

 

(Pomegranate Photo courtesy of Nasos3, Flickr account found here.) 

 

It isn’t so innocuous to me.

 

I immediately flashed back to mid-December three years ago and then what transpired for the eighteen months or so after that mid-December three years ago. I have come to associate writing about pomegranates with deep sadness.

 

Strange.

Read what I wrote on December 13, 2006:

 

I never know quite what to expect.

 

Perhaps this is what keeps me on my toes. Maybe it is what I love the most about Musing.

Today My Muse needed to go to the Dump and drop off a load of "stuff" left behind from some one long gone. He knew I enjoyed the ride out there so he invited me to accompany him. Off we drove, together in companionable silence with the occasional smattering of conversation.

I watched the glorious contrast of hillsides, from rows and rows of citrus directly next to vines, withered in the winter, to undomesticated brown California Central Valley grasses.

I looked into the distance and saw snow on the mountains surrounding us.

I felt at an extreme level of peace, the kind of peace frequently found inside the confines of a car rumbling down the freeway. There is something very connective to me about scanning the horizon in a moving car, even in terrain that others find uninteresting.

I remember as a teen driving through the grasslands of Kansas, finding incredible comfort in the rolling, grass covered plains. I remember in my early twenties driving from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia, seeing the weeping willows dotting the grassy knolls along the highway and being moved to tears by their beauty. There were miles of weeping willows, miles of connection with my traveling companion when some would have chosen to see concrete.

I chose to see heaven.

My Muse caught sight of some pomegranates growing on some trees close to the row of Eucalyptus I so enjoyed on a recent night-time jaunt to the same destination. I wouldn't know a pomegranate if I held one in my hand so naturally my interest was piqued as he pulled into the dirt road and began collecting sort of apple-esque fruit from the trees.

He sliced into one and handed it to me.

I wasn't sure quite what to do with this offering, so I took it in my hand and picked out some small segments of the fruit inside. "How does it taste?" I called to him as he surveyed the grove for a greater harvest.

"Great!" he called.

I popped one of the kernal sized pomegranate slivers into my mouth and the sweetness which leaked out was fine, indeed.

"Mmmmm." I said, taking another one. And another one. And another one.

A fruitful fascination was beginning.

I held one tiny sliver in my hand. It looked almost like the garnet stone in the birthstone ring my grandmother gave me many years ago. I squeezed it to see how it held up to pressure. Red juice exploded from it, covering my shirt and my glasses with splatters of red juice.

I shrieked out, laughing. "I am a mess! It exploded on me!"

I don't think my Muse believed me. I don't know if he truly believed this was my first pomegranate ever, either – but it was exactly that.

I started to enjoy the splatters on my shirt. I squeezed another sliver, making a beautiful red-purple splatter across my chest. I did it again, in between eating.

I ate and splattered myself, sliver by sliver, until my Muse came back to my side. "I am making art!" I said, happy as a kindergarten child.

"You look like a car accident victim," he said.

"I know," I laughed, indicating my shirt.

"You haven't even seen your face," he stated, quietly.

I hadn't even thought of that. "I don't think I want to see my face!"

I kept laughing at myself. I remembered several Julia Roberts movies that had almost the identical scene of "poor, out of place Julia character" attempting to figure out which silverware to use at a posh restaurant setting.

I know all about silverware, it is eating a pomegranate that presents a challenge.

Six months ago this might have embarrassed me to admit.

Now, it just makes life that much more intriguing. Life is filled with new things to try, new explorations, new passion, new zest for life.

I took more slivers and added art to the old and well-worn t-shirt of My Muse. He smiled in response and didn't tell me to stop. I squirted the back to match.

I felt more content than I had felt in a long time.

I might have looked like a car accident victim, I might have been within shouting distance of a land-fill but I rarely have I felt so vibrant and alive.

I just never know what to expect. Thank goodness.

 

It was three and a half months after this my brother, John, died.

 

It was shortly after that the man I shared this pomegranate experience with that transformative day went silent from my day-to-day life. I didn’t see him for close to eighteen months after this moment and our friendship has never been the same as it was back then.

 

I still grieve parts of our friendship, which was at one time the most miraculous relationship I had ever experienced. Perhaps that is what I meant to write into: the grief – the coming to completion in receiving the grief for the gift it is and will continue to be as long as I elect to stay in any semblance of contact with someone who once declared me to be his best friend and shortly there after disappeared from contact completely.

 

Comments

[Mary K]

It is amazing where an image will take us. That took a lot for you to share.
MK