The Songs of Spring, By Kelly Jarvis

 

“Where are the songs of spring? Ay, Where are they?”—John Keats 

Far away, where an invisible line divides the earth into two halves of the same globe, high on a mountain top, suspended between the soil and the sky, is the home of the Goddess of Spring. 

It is a humble home, but no palace could be more majestic, for the simple dwelling is surrounded by a luscious garden that clusters outside the windows and spills down the mountainside in every direction, as far as the eye can see.  

Each morning, when the sun kisses the mountain awake with its warmth and light, the goddess and her consort, a man with kind, autumn eyes, rise to tend the garden which blooms all year round. There is a child too, a little girl, who skips among the hills and trees.   

The garden is a vast organic library containing all the flowers that have ever existed on earth. There are rosebushes releasing their romantic scent into the air and fields of phlox leading to flowering arbors formed of pink cherry trees. There are beds of bluebell and bleeding heart. There are bowers of daffodil and delphinium winking in the distant breeze. The feeling of first love and the bloom of new life permeate every path, and the goddess and her consort move among the beauty, their hands deep in the rich soil, as they plant and prune.  

Twice a year, during the Equinox Festivals, the goddess performs her most sacred duty. On the Vernal Equinox she stands beneath the mountain sky and gazes toward the North, inhaling the scent of her garden and breathing it out toward the farthest reaches of the hemisphere. The earth below her breath awakens to spring, and flowers, the goddess’ gifts of love, unfurl across the land. Even in the farthest reaches of the North, where frost always blankets the ground, her magic breath settles upon the snow making it glisten like the dewy petals of morning glories. When the Autumnal Equinox signals harvest and death for the North, the goddess turns her gaze to the South and repeats her ritual, filling the southern half of the world with the joy of new growth, life, and hope.   

On all the other days of the year, the goddess toils in her garden, softly singing the songs of spring. Her tune is caught by cardinals and repeated by the robins, it echoes in the call of peeping frogs and the buzz of bees. And even in the darkest days of winter, when the melody seems lost, the goddess sings it for the poets, so they might capture it in verse and imbue the world with hope that spring, however far away it seems, will always come again. 

In the evenings, when the mountain falls asleep to a riotous display of fading light, the little girl asks the goddess to tell her the story of the day she was found. She has heard the story thousands of times, but each word chimes like a silver bell, and she smiles as the goddess begins. 

“One twilit evening, while I was finishing my work in the garden, I discovered a new flower I had never seen before.  It was an evening primrose, which opened its goblet shaped petals as the full moon rose in the sky. I found you nestled within the golden leaves, a tiny baby, no larger than my finger, with a smile that drove the sadness from my heart. I named you Kora, which means little maiden, and I became your mother.” 

As her mother speaks, Kora drifts off to sleep, the songs of spring dancing through her dreams. 

The world spins, the seasons unfurl, and the little girl named Kora matures into a beautiful woman who serves in the garden alongside her mother. She waters the wisteria and coaxes the crocus forth from hibernation. She plants pots of peonies and sings to the sweet peas which explode with bright colors at the sound of her song.  

One day, she wakes to find hundreds of mortals waiting to meet her, men and women who have heard stories of her beauty and kindness and have journeyed to the mountain in the sky to seek her hand in marriage.  

“The time has come for you to choose a consort, Kora, for the human world must work with the heavens to ensure the return of spring,” her mother explains.  

Kora looks at the crowd; there are princes on horseback, knights wearing silver armor, and shepherds with earnest smiles. She has no idea how to choose. 

Her mother’s consort speaks in a clear, loud voice. “To win the hand of our fair maiden Kora, you must search the world and bring back the most valuable gift you can find.” 

The suitors’ hearts ignite at the chance to compete for Kora’s hand, and they bid her farewell to begin their journeys. 

It is ever so long before the first suitor returns, a nobleman with a chiseled face. “I bring you the softest satin from the East,” he proclaims, unfolding a skein of cloth in the garden clearing. It feels cool against Kora’s skin, but it is not as soft as the clover which grows in the shade of the willow trees, and Kora turns the nobleman away. 

The world spins, the seasons unfurl, and another suitor returns bringing fine wine which tastes like ash to Kora who has spent her life drinking garden ambrosia. Another brings precious rubies and amethyst which pale next to the dark red geraniums and purple heather in her mother’s meadows. When a suitor offers Kora a velvet pouch of expensive coins, the sound of their jingling falls flat against the melodic ringing of the garden wind chimes, and Kora believes she will never find her consort. 

“True love takes time,” her mother says, “and we have much to do in the garden to keep us busy.” 

So, they water and they weed, they plant and they prune, until, many seasons later, another suitor, a lowly shepherd, finally returns. 

“I have come to apologize, my lady, for though I wanted to travel the world and find you a valuable treasure to express my love, I was needed to tend my sheep,” he says sadly. “So, I have brought you a gift of honey from the bees that live in my garden, and I ask only that we sweeten and share one pot of tea together, before I take my leave.”  

He holds out the jar of honey. It glistens like gold in the sun. Kora shivers as she notices an autumn glint in his kind eyes. 

“Will you stay with me and help me sing the songs of spring?” she asks. 

His smile makes her heart skip a beat. 

When they marry, the bees swarm happily round the wedding arbor, pollinating the garden until it overflows with love. 

     

The world spins and the seasons unfurl. On the Vernal Equinox, the goddess takes Kora by the hand and tells her that in six months’ time, the ritual to renew spring will pass on to her. Confused, Kora begs her mother to explain. 

“All things in the garden must grow and die. The fallen petals fertilize the seeds that wait patiently for their time in the sun,” the goddess begins. “When it is spring in the North, it is autumn in the South, for there can be no life without death, no love without loss.”  

“I cannot live without you,” Kora cries. 

Her mother takes her in her arms and sings a song to soothe her fears. “You will never be without me. Six months from now, when you bury me and my consort in the grove of apple blossom trees, you will understand. But for now, we have much to do in the garden to keep us busy.” 

So, they water and weed, they plant and they prune, and day by day, the goddess and her consort grow older and older. 

When they die in each other’s arms on the eve of the Equinox, the Goddess of Spring, gray, stooped, and wrinkled, is more beautiful than she has ever been. 

The new Goddess of Spring, once known only as Kora, buries the couple beneath the apple blossom trees. Her own shepherd consort digs the grave and holds her while she weeps over it. Her tears water the ground and when they dry, the soil blooms with tiny blue flowers that have never been seen before. The goddess inhales their sweet perfume, and parting the soft sapphire petals, finds a tiny baby, no larger than her finger, nestled in the shadowy leaves. The baby’s smile drives the sadness from her heart. “I shall name you Kora, which means little maiden,” the goddess whispers, “and I shall be your mother.” 

Far away, where an invisible line divides the earth into two halves of the same globe, high on a mountain top, suspended between the soil and the sky, is the home of the Goddess of Spring. 

Her garden is a library containing the stories of all the flowers that have ever existed on earth. There are valleys of violets and hills of honeysuckle. There are planters full of pansies, hanging baskets of begonias, and, in a grove of apple blossom trees, there is a carpet of blue forget-me-nots that fills the air with the sweet fragrance of memory. 

The goddess toils in her garden with her consort and her child, surrounded by the floral remains of all the beautiful souls who have given their service to the steady renewal of the seasons. The goddess sings as she works, and her tune is shared by the sparrows and matched by the mayflies, until it reaches the coldest and darkest corners of the earth, filling the hearts of the poets who hear it with the hopeful songs of spring. 

Kelly Jarvis teaches classes in literature, writing, and fairy tale at Central Connecticut State University, The University of Connecticut, and Tunxis Community College. She lives, happily ever after, with her husband and three sons in a house filled with fairy tale books.

Cover Painting: "Spring" by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1850

Cover Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

POETRY SHOWCASE - A RIDE THROUGH FAERIE by Clay F. Johnson

Enchanted Conversation's
POETRY SHOWCASE
Presents
CLAY F. JOHNSON
She looked at him fierce with eyes of faceted

Emerald, insouciant & imperious,

Tinctured with poetic madness, and said:

Oh, my dear artless boy, but I am the moonlight...

Part I

The Felling of the Tree

With each stroke from an axe of earthly metal,

Woodchips of silver luminescence fell

Like broken witch-stones, shards of fallen stars,

Consumed by the earth they became buried dreams

Spiraling smoke whispered from each tree-wound,

Breathing death of cold enchantment, nebulae-

Swirls of frozen dreams, worlds undiscovered,

Unknown, un-sought, and unimaginable

Music of cold crystal echoed like voices

Of spirits, violin-strains of c-sharp minor

Lingering forever in the ether,

Breathing new life into the bones of new death

Out of the cold whispers and spirit-voices

Of living music appeared a sleeping serpent—

Shaken from its dreaming, it awakens,

Slithering sublime through its buried storms

Its scales were pale as if touched by moon-cancer,

As if kissed by frost on silver-plated glass—

Yet its slithering left liquid fire, dark ash

From Amazon-flames burning inconsumable

Even stars can see the rainforest-fires breathing

Death into the lungs of the Earth, like the black hole

That swallows the dead star, consuming life from death

Until it lives as one sphere of two dead eternities

The axman, Lord Ortho, saw no broken gems,

No luciferous stardust of Venus,

No dreamy star-trails, no silver-slithering

Serpent and heard no music of cold whisperings

The tree fell into the arms of its ancient

Woodland, spongy with old-growth undisturbed,

Existing when the world was a living emerald

Growing unburdened atop waves of rolling sapphire

Its mayflower-blooms were in full life, holding

The frosts of starlight, a singular flame

Of witches’ light that self-reflects the past life

Once lived within the borders of twilight

Slipping farther away, the mayflower-blooms

Of snow-frosted white still held onto life,

Still held the magic of the dying light,

Within the captured twilight, breathless, yet alive

Severed from Her ancient roots, the dying tree,

Once called The Staff of Awilda, absorbed

The springtime’s life of death, its mysteries,

Its branches of living magic twisting each to each

Ortho the Tree-killer, or realtor in chief

The voices named him, begins further destructions

Of the ancient woodland, treading upon

Once untrodden bluebells, fay-slippers, and foxgloves

Drunk on wildflowers and violets, deeply purpled

When alive and absorbing the cold starlight—

Drunk in vain, for in death the purples change

To a wrinkled face of yellow-leaf decay

For the ruin of centuries of growing life,

The creation of his human home took no time,

Mere weeks, finished before the summer solstice—

Long before Litha, heathen-fires and tree worship

Ostentatious & tasteless his home consumes

All flora & fauna, all peace & harmony,

All magic of once growing & singing views

Of natural aesthetic & silent solitude

Babbling day & night like a noisome magpie

That murders the song of the nightingale,—

Nowhere near as clever—he silences

The living music that breathed for eternities

Part II

The Moonlight Meeting

of Lord Ortho and Setareh

She awoke with the last days of spring, bringing

New night-music among the ruined woodland

As light footsteps fell softly upon dead flowers,

Awakening new life upon the midnight hours

Beneath her feet slithered beautiful things,

Creatures wrapped with luminescent serpent-scale,

Flickering like ghost-candles of black opal—

The coldest glow of the will-o’-the-wisp flame

Within the woodchips of once-living bark

Crawl tree-worms reflecting cold stars, swimming

Delirious through drippings of Venetian glass,

A liquid lust from teardrops of blue goldstone

Within the littered decay of dead flowers

Of livid purples and corrupted blues

Lives a new light, a new perfection of Night,

Living for new death in ethereal hues

Above her floating hair floats pale whisperings,

Flutterings of shadow, gossamer-winged

Sylphs, spirits of the diaphanous air,

Silken delicate they manifest fine & fair

Born from death, from the dying of the light,

From the withering of flowers & ice,

The frosts of starlight, bleeding old life

With a liquid kiss it consumes itself in new life

New life, new to this world, but not the Other,

Not to the mysteries of celestial light,

Nor to the songs of starlight—No, its bright life

Has been buried deep, deep within oceans of time

Yet, in recent times, such life has been nightmared,

Falsely called evil by obsequious minds,

Bedeviled with names of demons & devils,

And blamed for all the world’s wrongs & ills & troubles

And even she, the one who walks light-footed

Atop scattered tree-bark and flowers murdered

By the hypocrisy of artless men,

Has suffered the misogyny of unjust names:

Mother by first pagans, and Goddess Divine,

Then Astarte, Pandora, Aphrodite,

Child-eating Lamia, Eve the snake-friend,

And La Belle Dame sans Merci with her wild, wild eyes

She was born from a whisper, a tree-shadow,

A lingering of dark from the Evening Star—

Yet she absorbed the starlight, consumed its dreams,

And became The Fated Star, or green-eyed Setareh

And thus it is she who walks in the starlight,

Not in beauty, but in cold philosophy,

In the human ruin of ancient plant-life

In pursuit of sick lust for life of luxury

Long did she linger in the cold starlight,

Misty-eyed with deep despair, crystalizing

Each emerald of green within her spectral eyes

With a mystery of unfathomable life

Until she peeled off her skin of star-shadow

And became the moonlight, drowning out all stars

With a brilliance of pure silver stellaria—

And cold & sick became green-eyed Setareh

Silently sorrowful she stood as if captured

In a single beam of haunted moonlight,

Changed, like a face behind casketed glass,

Entranced with her own self-absorption for wrath

Though cancered by moon-silver, she remained

Ever beautiful, as if the pale new light

Revealed a new magic within her eyes,

Unveiled only in moonlight like enchanted gems

From his window Ortho saw the new moon

Burning the black sky like an orb of white-fire,

And beneath its cold beams he saw her, Setareh,

Glowing as if her skin was sick with its silver

He ran out into the night to seek her,

Not only to demand from her why she dare

Trespass on his land, but to touch her flesh,

To see if she was real or shadow or elf

Though her foot was light, it was swift as she

Glided effortlessly through the rotting woodland,

Still fresh with livid moisture of new decay

Fragrant with spring’s mayflowers withering last breaths

But he caught her, and grasped her by the wrist—

Her emerald eyes already saw through him,

And, as if glamoured by spell-craft, he said:

Like the night, do you follow your inner moonlight?

She looked at him fierce with eyes of faceted

Emerald, insouciant & imperious,

Tinctured with poetic madness, and said:

Oh, my dear artless boy, but I am the moonlight

Like many men before him, and many more

After him, he wanted to possess her,

To own her, and as artless as he was,

He knew of but one way: to marry her

Still glitter-eyed by her emerald eyes,

Enchanted deep with a charm of waking sleep,

And without once asking for her star-born name,

He proposed without ring or ceremony

My witless boy, she said, my people will object,

And they will bear me away from this woodland wreck—

But surely you are brave and strong and would protect

Me from harm or wrong…in these words do you respect?

Though his knavish eyes never once held poetry

Nor beheld a vision or great mystery,

They now shone senseless with hope, and he said: Lady,

I am master of axe and sword—I will own your safety

There they married, on the solstice, within a beam

Of her own moonlight, surrounded unseen

By her creatures of night-life slithering

And swimming through the drippings of human ruin

Now husband & wife, they walked back along

A brilliant path of pure moonlight, and Ortho

Knew not why—his mind, though still enchanted,

Was bent on his new bride, which he deemed his prize

As she stepped inside Ortho’s pretentious home,

Tasteless with vulgar rooms of wasted space,

She peeled off her skin of moonlight and became

Darker light, and Ortho’s eyes shone with new lust

She bid him go to his bedroom, and he did,

And he waited impatiently for her to come—

When she came she brought a glowing cup of tea:

It was opium to lust, poetry for artless dreams

Part III

Fragment of a Dream

Absorbed like bubbling honey

Consuming atmospheres of clouds,

The amber star dissolves all mists

And renews all living greens

It unrolled the rolling thunder

And buried it deep, deep within

The bracken & bramble,

Mingling colors & music

Quiet spirits fluttered

About the silk-woven air,

Capturing the fragrance

Of cresting sea-waves

Between the emerald

Shadows of silent grass

Wander busy life

Of gnomic mysteries

Collecting tea-potions

From flowery teacups,

Bluebells of changing sapphire,

Purpled by frosts of starlight

Richly frozen each night

They become ice-charms,

Whispering ghost quartz

Capturing living dreams

Each color holds a flavor,

And a vivid memory,

Released when dissolved

Into dreamy ecstasies

Spirits & gnomic mysteries

Consume their glowing tea

Like some shadow-haunted

Ghostly tea party

A rustling disturbed the quiet,

And silvery roots slithered

With dreamy obscurity

Like a serpent sleeping

Then all busy life stopped,

And there was dead silence,

The air was cold and all eyes

Fixed upon the dreamer

All eyes were of emerald

Faceted with glamour,

They held dreams poetical

And visions phantasmal

A rustling once more

Disturbed the dead silence,

And the sleeping serpent

Slithered and slept less deeply

From the emerald fires

Of their eyes shadows crept,

And with cold hands gave the dreamer

A leaf-fringed parchment that read:

“Writ with shadow upon this leaf

Lives a fragment from our spirit

Whom we lost upon thundering

Sea-waves of Italy”

Wake the serpent not—lest he

Should not know the way to go,—

Let him crawl which yet lies sleeping

Through the deep grass of the meadow!

Not a bee shall hear him creeping,

Not a may-fly shall awaken

From its cradling blue-bell shaken,

Not the starlight as he’s sliding

Through the grass with silent gliding

Part IV

Lord Ortho Awakens

Ortho wakes with the feeling of something cold

Slithering and coiling upon his throat—

But it is nothing more than a waking dream,

An aftereffect from his tea of poetry

Yet his waking dream was not all a dream,

For his new wife is gone, and in her place

Slithers a sickly serpent, moon-cancer pale,

Uncoiling upon a severed bluebell

Consumed by fear & rage & embarrassment

He goes to find his axe to kill the serpent—

But when he returns the serpent has vanished

And the bluebell now has a stem of silver glass

Outside his home stands with noble elegance

A pale horse, silvered by dawn’s early rays,

Unbridled and with eyes of spectral emerald

That reflect a thousand facets of mystery

With palm-sweaty hesitation he wraps his

Fingers around the steed’s ghost-silvered mane,

Pulling himself up with strange weightlessness

As if his flesh at once belonged to the Otherworld

With the lightness of a cloud, Ortho was borne

Away like the wind, in a sort of phantom-

Gallop—eerie silent except crystal sounds

Like ice-bells ringing upon the singing air

Racing full-stride toward a solitary

Thorn tree, in full mayflower bloom, the ghostly

Horse leaps headlong into its leafy shadow,

Glittering in its own darkness like black goldstone

Melting through the silver-thorn’s sparkled shadow

They materialize in the realm of Faerie—

Crisp is the air tinted by auroral greens

Framing the glitter of silver-sugared leaves

In apparent search for his fay-stolen bride,

He rides full-long, from jade dusk till violet dawn,

Diffused like cold crystal rays of amethyst

That deepen with each phantom stride

After a single solitary day, the horse

Turns back, spiriting toward another haunted

Tree-shadow, glistening like a frozen moonbeam,

Leaps through waking Ortho from his Faerie dream

The horse takes him softly through familiar paths,

But they are untrodden, for the buried dreams

Of witch-stones grew into blooming new life,

And shards of stars gave birth to new breathings of trees

They stop at an old ruin and linger—

He knows this place, for it is the remains

Of his house, and growing out of the remnants

Twists living branches of the tree he once wasted

Nature-taken by centuries of time

His dwelling now stands as a vulgar relic—

He dismounts and shrivels to pale old life,

His horse dissolves to the shape of his missing wife

She unclothes him with her insouciant eyes,

Still imperious, still enchanted by moonlight,

Still emerald and faceted with mysteries,

And before he withers away to bone-dust, she says:

Hello, husband, do you remember this hawthorn tree?

Your axe of earthly metal bit into her with its teeth,

Waking the sleeping serpent, disturbing its buried dreams,

Closing a doorway between the moon & stars and death & sleep

Yet in human ruin there is no death, there is no change,

And in my garden I buried storms and melodies strange:

Thunder & music, whispers & slithers of fine & fair—

Yes, look deep, deep into my emerald eyes and despair

We were married two hundred years ago this very night,

Within my own moonlight, consumed by a single beam—

Haunted were the visions & shadows of your waking dream,
Though my names are many, kneel to me as your Faerie Queen.

Clay F. Johnson is an amateur pianist, devoted animal lover, and incorrigible reader of Gothic literature and Romantic-era poetry. His writing has been featured in the Horror Writers Association’s Poetry Showcase, nominated for a Rhysling Award, and recently received an honorable mention in The Best Horror of the Year. Find out more on his website at www.clayfjohnson.com or follow him on Twitter @ClayFJohnson.

Cover Painting: Prince Arthur and the Fairy Queen by Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1788

Graphic Layout: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff