Cult of the Dying God

By Sarah Ashbach

Flora di Stabiae fresco

Featured in our forthcoming New Lyre - Spring/Summer 2025

I’ve seen the wild girls dancing in the trees
in February, just as memories
of sense begin to creep into the roots
of elms, and oaks, and in the snowdrop shoots
nodding their heads above the melting frost.

Have you seen them? The ones who count up lost
things of a year—the holly berries flung
into the rimy snow to rot among
wet autumn leaves; old antlers shed beside
a low creek bank where hungry foxes hide;
the scatterings of red-flecked feathers left
by doves. Those girls accepted autumn’s theft
of the maturing wood’s green gladness when
the year turned fallow, but they now begin
to cultivate their revels that will bring
the long-expectant wood its promised spring.

And have you seen their ivy-winding staves
tipped with a pinecone? Each girl laughs and waves
her staff to wake the trees. Their god delights
to see a place for spring’s exacting rites.
Have you seen them? The ones who testify
in ecstasy of spring why spring must d…