Fortune-telling with foxes

Under the Banyan:

In the wilderness beyond Sangha stood a trio of elders who provide people with advice about problems or changes in their lives. To do this they seek the help of a sacred desert creature — the pale fox (Vulpes pallida). First the men use a stick to scribble symbols in the sand to represent a client’s questions and possible answers. Then they scatter peanuts over the marks they have left and go home for the night. After the sun sets, there is a good chance that a fox will come to eat the nuts. The next morning, the elders check which answers the fox has left its footprints on — and that is the advice they give.

The Radish Gospel

erasure of a page from Samuel Pepys' diary

A breakfast of radishes:
the happiest act of oblivion
in the Church of No.
I disclaim any other government but fire
and in the body, joy.
No money or credit, I spend time, play music.
I came to bring this news
and a bottle of wine.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 2 May 1660.

Changing

“I count/ myself/ a perfect/ stone of/ heaven,/ a park/ without/ a gate…” ~ D. Bonta

The woman picks out a dress, a scarf— blue
paisley, beaded, wispy— and tries it on.
Blake said see with not through the eye

so she doesn’t believe what the mirror says,
is dubious of the moon that always works
itself free of the branches, flood-lighting

the room like a stage. She doesn’t think
the spangles on the fabric are enough
to tide her through the evening,

though she knows they aren’t meant to.
She has been taught where the gaze goes,
the heart is supposed to follow.

But it takes years, a lifetime even,
before the body feels it can stand,
exposed like any ordinary flower

to the air, frayed, imperfect, unlike
the stones that guard the doors
of heaven— And how do we know

that every tree knotted with whorls
was not once a girl, running, mouth open
by the river, away or toward her new life?

 

In response to Via Negativa: Maypole.

Visitor

This entry is part 1 of 12 in the series Bear Medicine

 

A bear appears out of the night: I hear the crunch of gravel cease as it turns onto my walk, pads up to the door, rears on its hind legs & peers in. I look up from where I sit hunched over my reading in a florescent pool of light. Unreadable eyes, a massive intelligent snout moving from side to side like a blind man’s cane. Do I really hear its hot breath through the screen or just imagine it later? This cave is taken, I say. There’s nothing here for you. It drops to all fours & shuffles off, & I go to the door in time to see its receding shape disappear between the stars.

Maypole

erasure of a page from Samuel Pepys' diary

People
have
set up
maypoles;
I resolve
to hide.
I count
myself
a perfect
stone of
heaven,
a park
without
a gate,
a pistol
for pins.
In my
cabin
writing,
I hear
a great
rose
drown
in the
streets.


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 1 May 1660.