NaPoWriMo25 Day 1: Bittersweet Spring

01 Apr, 2025

And we're off to the races with NaPoWriMo 2025! I don't know if I'll be able to do this everyday this month, April seems to get busier every year. But I'm going to try, and that counts for something. I had the worst brain fog today, but sitting down and working at a poem is something I've done a lot, so it wasn't that hard to get this one out. I'm glad about that and quite proud of myself actually.

Day 1: Bittersweet Spring

Blossom on this fine spring day
After winter, so pale and fraught
Spilling with so much to say

Terrified of dull and grey
Petals curling at impending rot
Blossom on this fine spring day

With courage that is soon to fray
Beseeching to forget me not
Spilling with so much to say

With hope and song in blithe display
Nectar numbing that aching spot
Blossom on this fine spring day

Fated to mourn what cannot stay
An elegy for what time begot
Spilling with so much to say

This sickly sweet fear does betray
Lingering love this life has wrought
Blossom on this fine spring day
Spilling with so much to say

Here is the prompt for the poem, credit to Maureen Thorson from the NaPoWriMo website:
As with pretty much any discipline, music and art have their own vocabulary. Today, we challenge you to take inspiration from this glossary of musical terms, or this glossary of art terminology, and write a poem that uses a new-to-you word.

Things that inspired the poem: I've been pretty obsessed with the musical Hadestown recently- especially Persephone's portrayal in it. Persephone- the goddess of springtime- spends a few months of the year underground with her husband Hades, god of the Underworld. We experience winter on earth until she returns, bringing spring and summer with her. In most tellings and retellings of the story, Persephone is portrayed as a young maiden, whisked away by her lover/captor¹ to the dark Underworld. Hadestown's Persephone is an older, more mature woman who self-medicates with alcohol, resenting her husband as he has built an empire in his desperation to not lose her. My poem is about spring, not as a new beginning, but as a ticking clock before Persephone has to return to the Underworld. She is on borrowed time, and while there is joy and song, it won't last. I wanted to evoke themes of how we use flowers at funerals- a symbol of birth and new beginnings being used to remember those who have left us.

I wasn't very keen when I saw the prompt. While there are plenty of interesting music and art terms, I felt that inserting one into my poem would make it stand out like a sore thumb. I toyed with using "mezzo"- a vocal range traditionally reserved for supporting female roles in theatre, trying to play on how Persephone is often a supporting character in her own stories, shadowed by male gods like Hades and Zeus. But it felt out of place in my poem. I settled for "elegy" as that felt like a word I would use anyway.

The style of the poem is a villanelle. I've written a couple of them before, they're always quite satisfying with the repeated lines and limited rhyme scheme. You've almost definitely read Dylan Thomas' Do not go gentle into that good night and that is another example of a villanelle.

Anyway, that was Day 1. The blog is still under construction as of the time of writing this, and I might just do an update about why I made this blog on a day where I can't be bothered to write a poem this month. Thank you for reading!

#NaPoWriMo25 #poem