Mourning for the Oracle

I'm walking through a titan’s green cathedral;

Giant trunks ascending to a vault

Of frescoed sunlight, sifting through

A canopy of softly singing leaves.

A summer’s haze of pollen and of dust

Enchants the tranquil chamber of this nave,

Betraying passage of the breeze like

Rising incense dancing.

I am suffused with hum of sacred silence,

But from my belly I begin to feel

A tide -

A rising wave, torrential spout of laughter,

And of tears.

-

Oracular geometry

Spread out upon the pitted top

Of seer’s Tarot table.

The room is hung with silver drapes,

And silver drapes the sagging neck of

Ancient, sulfurous, eyes-abstracted

Crone.

The cards, in color, place, orientation

Read to her a telling of the

Future, of things yet to come, and

Hidden truths within the pulsing

Viscera of riddles.

I saw her once from curiosity:

Behind a storefront’s fizzing neon glare

I sought a seeing from Madame du Lac,

With painted face and cigarette-stained

Hands,

And with those fingers did she deftly prod

The cards into a mystical position…

She muttered in the act of bending low,

Her cataracted eyes half-blinded by

Infinite web of probabilities.

-

I cry for her, within this vast

Basilica of instant-living things;

I lean my head against a tangled trunk

And laugh, in celebration of

The present moment’s certain mystery.