When someone curses
you and your stars, switch
to the tarot deck. Cast
your runes to approach
the future in a different way.
The stars reveal The Future
only to a select few,
which is why we had to invent
these other ways to divine
our ever present ancestor,
The Future. We squint
to see what it holds
in its wrinkled hands.
The Future, mysterious and hooded,
prefers the shadows, the galaxies
hidden to our casual eyes.
Very few of us want to know.
We prefer the icy sparkle, the knowledge
in our stars kept light years away.
But if you listen, you can hear
our destinies in every insect song.
Every butterfly sighting reveals
our future: the crawling
creature cocooned
until a moment of brief
beauty, the rush skyward,
the descent into the dust
that will reclaim us all.
Inspired by Laura M. Kaminski’s Ghazal with lines from The Book of Flight and Luisa A. Igloria’s Trusting the process.