Horror Haiku Club Prompt
September 16 - Demeter
One of the twelve Olympians, Demeter is the goddess of the earth, harvest, and agriculture.
Your prompt is DEMETER
Queen of the poppy
Help us sleep through long winters
So we won’t hunger
When her daughter Persephone is in the underworld, Demeter refuses to let crops grow, plunging the world into feckless gloom. Early records of her worship come from Crete, where she was a goddess of the opium poppy.
Quartet on the Eleusinian Mysteries
___
1.
Dark winter doctrine -
you must, and all around you,
die, rot - rot in earth
___
2.
Spring bursts with the news -
things that died come back to life,
you too, sweet pilgrim
___
3.
Summer Demeter
bulbs fat with new life belly -
Persephone sleeps
___
4.
Autumn's teaching now -
mother is to go beneath
so daughter harvests
==
[Stuff I learned in a previous life on a pilgrimage to Eleusis. They said they'd kill anyone who divulged it, but I don't think they'll be able to get me now.]
Washed up at Whitby,
Where fish not grain gets gathered,
Still your name brings dread