Each spring, Persephone emerges
from the icy underworld, gifting us
daffodils and violets. How fitting,
then, to come upon this structure in
April. Half sculpture, half fountain,
she holds in a basin of green water
small spotted chorus frogs singing
their sexy song at dawn and dusk,
their need to enlarge the chorus
growing more urgent every day as
the sun rises higher, brighter, hotter,
until the summer solstice reminds us
that Persephone must always descend.
—
Pat Valdata is a poet and novelist. Her poetry book about women aviation pioneers, Where No Man Can Touch, won the 2015 Donald Justice Poetry Prize. A revised edition of this book was published in June 2023 (Wind Canyon Books) and won third prize from the Delaware Press Association. Her other poetry titles are Inherent Vice and Looking for Bivalve, both published by now-defunct Pecan Grove Press.
