Dog Star

Walking widdershins through the side yard to the back, drought-colored grass burning under my feet. The grass is scattered with leaves the same color. Everything has turned brittle in the heat. 

I pass my husband who is sorting through boxes on the porch. We say nothing, but I can feel his preoccupied silence. I wonder if he notices my receding figure as I walk away. In my mind's eye we are like planets, moving through conjunctions, oppositions, trines.

On the other side of the fence, even as I stop to consider it, the woman who lives next door is dying. I push back against this stark knowledge and find myself remembering the lighted doorbell of her house, how it always flickered faintly, like a pulse. 

The dry grass stabs at me, rustles in the dusty breeze. 

I think, to live is to pass from one space to another. I think, I would make an inventory of my pockets, if I had any. 

Far away in the blue distance, Sirius stirs and yawns, awaiting its heliacal rise. 

Image source: Canis Major

The Ace Of Crowns

It's the last day of March. Spring has sprung. The earth has revived in vivid color, and here I am without having written a word. A global pandemic will do that to you.

It's not as if there's been no inspiration. It's not as if magic and mystery have come to end. On the contrary, things are more phantasmagorical than ever. It's the way of things in a crisis, I suppose, what with our consensus reality straining at the seams.

No, I'm just tired, really, tired and inclined to be quiet right now. There is too much to say, and a lot that shouldn't be said, and it's beyond me to sort out which is which.

Between the psychic jolts and the glitches and the breaking apart of things that must be put together again, it's a lot to handle. That's not even accounting for the very real fear and grief we feel amid the onslaught of change.

That said, if cracks have appeared in our world, there is no reason not to find the joy that's hidden in them. I daresay there is every reason we should.

"The death card means change" says the fortuneteller to the nervous querent in every cliched movie scene, but if you ever wanted a real-life example, this is it.

If our foundations have cracked, our own integrity has never mattered more. If you have to choose between helping yourself or others, which will it be?

The card has been laid. The change is at hand. The only thing left to do is decide what it means to you.

Good luck and Godspeed.