The Reading

The Empress Speaks

Vital energies pool in you,
Dammed in the borderlands:
What you know and what you knew,
Just beneath the guiding hand.
The waistline of the Empress
Draws the magic, irresistible.
She stands alone, invisible in the distance,
Birds speak, clouds trail her magnificence.
Dream-like clarity is a gift,
Dragging perception and conjecture;
What is still unknown in a persistent mist.
Two keen swords cross her stature,
Uncross them, no longer resist:
Released into a still-eyed rapture.

The Hermit Stumbles Upon

Searching with a lantern for an honest man,
Under every rock, between blades of grass,
The missing key is buried in this land;
Time passes slowly on the uphill grade.
Keep the falcon hooded, very well-trained,
It answers your call, rounding back again
To an elegant lady in a flowing robe.
At your feet, the three-headed dog yelps
For what was, is, and will be.
Even our faults fertilize the fields,
Labour alone cannot grant the yield.
A single cubic centimetre of chance
Unfolds from the crystal Cabinet
A lightening rod and death’s starry dance.

The Moon

Living in a world of lunar light,
Navigating the X-ray terrain alone,
Everything in relief, fragmented, in flight.
Coming and going, driven, barely contained.
Matched to anguish in all its height,
You cleanly drew out the pain.
Who knows what it cost you here,
Denied, defied, abused, without compare.
A Cartesian framework rested below,
In the shadow of all your fears.
When dawn broke, the never-ending mystery flowed
Beyond even the art of the Aztec’s gold.
A majesty of purpose, imaginative grace,
Ownership of all here can know.

The Devil

Past every warning sign she goes
Down in the dungeon of the mind,
The entrance is concealed with rhyme.
Those hidden things never told;
Fiery gates circled by hell’s fold.
Yet shafts of light kill a vampire cold:
Warmth and radiance give a chance,
An orphan child gains form and colour.
She spins in a figure eight like a dance,
Two wands suggest all counterparts:
At the centre of the world she awaited
The Wedding of want and need to start.
Only a bloodied queen can sit atop a throne
Assured of a rose in a desert of broken stone.

This poem is based on an idiosyncratic reading of the Waite-Rider Tarot deck for the astrological signs of Libra, Virgo, Pisces, and Capricorn respectively.