In 2019, my research about the pomegranate “as symbol” disrupted the relative equanimity of the very season with which it is associated–spring. In cracking a pomegranate open, abundance, rebirth, fertility, and beauty–(April itself!) was literally, on my hands. As symbol, however, the pomegranate grew darker with each journal article, poem, and book review I read.

Had I, too, looked at the moon and seen red as Peter Balakian writes in Pomegranate where “sometimes she looked up at the moon and saw you,” meaning a pomegranate? Had I subjected others to my cacophonies, prompting them to move away from me as Kahlil Gilbran writes in The Pomegranate? In that poem, a man abandons his home located in the heart of a pomegranate, as the critical voices of the seeds forced him to find refuge into the heart of a quince, “where the seeds are few and almost silent.

And what of the labyrinth interiors described in Oscar Wilde’s The House of Pomegranates?

I have since returned to John Poch’s poem, Pomegranate Queen, which reminded me that “color is crucial,” my cue to get back to work.