Thursday, June 6, 2019

Dreams of a Passing Season ~ A Tarot Reading

Run Moon run Moon Moon 
I hear the horses’ hoofs 
Leave me boy! Don’t walk 
on my lane of white starch.
Federico Garcia Lorca


"The Shell Deck" @ellasedge
Tarot Cards by Nicoletta Ceccoli
Fair Use

The boy emperor rocks
on his little wooden horse
and fights the old demons
of his seasoned imagination.
The man loves this small
wounded boy inside himself
as he rocks back and forth
on a journey through her dreams.

Through her dreams the girl embraces
her own fragility and clings to fear
of leaving all she has loved behind
to face the sorrow of abandonment.
The woman is in love with her
own dreams but wings have sprung
from her ivory shoulder blades
in this nesting place of an old season.

An old season has shed its leaves,
her eyelids are open, all tears spent
and her heart, she keeps safely tethered
high above the world floating free.
And the man who was her emperor,
he waits behind the empty doorway
of her final dream, awake at last to
the notion he has lost her forever.




This is my reading of the Shell Deck Tarot Cards provided by Ella Wilson as today's Guest Host in The Imaginary Garden. As I contemplated the cards, a story of past, present and future emerged.
My spirit guide was Federico Garcia Lorca, born 5 June 1898.


26 comments:

  1. Your poem felt like the moon waltzing with Napoleon and Josephine's dreams. The tug of war as we ventured into childhood's expectations and moved forward into the fragile wings of ego's perspective. I love your interpretation especially how you chose a spirit guide to set the tone of this venture and your intuition's dance with the woman as a bird. "in this nesting place of an old season."
    We do have to rise above those who try to control our path and find a new ways to tether our heart.
    Gorgeous Kerry! Your intuitive voice shows us both thorns and roses~
    Bravo!!

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    1. Thank you so much, Ella. The woman is quite in love with her own poem! I let my intuition guide me to tell the story of the cards, whether it is prophetic or not, remains to be seen!

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  2. "Through her dreams the girl embraces her own fragility," this is utterly gorgeous, Kerry!❤️ The second stanza especially pulls on my heartstrings.

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    1. We have to take care of ourselves, as women. Thanks, Sanaa.

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  3. You've done wonderful justice to the image, and that closing--having read so many of your other poems over the past year or more--is marvelous. May he eat his heart out.

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    1. Haha! This could be the story of my life, not just a year but I think it is common experience for older women today to wish to free themselves from the patriarchal relationships they entered into in the naivety of youth.
      Also without heartbreak and fear of death, there'd be no poetry, so I shamelessly tap into both themes ad nauseum.

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  4. ps--wow @ the DH Lawrence quote on the side bar! Even though he could be kind of sexist, I still love old DH. "Lady Chatterly" is one of my all-time top ten.

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    1. The quotes change each time one comes to the page, but i do love a D.H. Lawrence quote. Sexist as his times, perhaps but quite liberal in his portrayal of female sexuality.

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  5. This is so beautiful Kerry. I love how the beginning of each stanza was the last three words of the previous one.

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    1. Thanks, Linda. I worked at that to get a kind of sequence effect. Glad it worked.

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  6. I love the safety of a tethered heart, like the woman in your poem. I especially love the entire middle stanza. It is rather spectacular.

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    1. That central card has so many layers of meaning to it. Thanks, Sherry.

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  7. Beautifully written ... I love it expresses freedom. I find it to be rather feminist, and I love that. :)

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    1. Yes, I wanted it to be female centred, but had to deal with the man-boy image. I think the last card ties them together so well. Great juxtaposition.

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  8. "The man loves this small
    wounded boy inside himself"

    "in this nesting place of an old season."

    "and her heart, she keeps safely tethered
    high above the world floating free."

    I know you don't need me quoting your own words back at you, but these are magnificent. I like how one stanza connects to the other... There is a whole mini novel in each stanza!

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    1. Thank you so much, Margaret. I really like to know which lines resonate with readers. It helps the creative process to know what works.

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  9. I liked my read here, Kerry. I was placing myself as the "... small wounded boy inside himself as he rocks back and forth on (his) journey ..." I could do that through dreams of several girls who were greatly or slight involved. Two I still ponder dreams, others now and then. Some of my unpublished memoirs in this light are posted on one of my obscure blogs, waiting for "someday" to continue.
    At the end of the first verse, "... through her dreams" threw me for a loop. I went back up to read again, puzzled that I had missed who the "her" was. In a short while I skipped down to the second and had no longer to imagine the mystery lady. The repeat was a good transition device but it took a while for me to see. After that I enjoyed it a lot, no problem with the second.
    ..

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    1. Thanks, Jim. A mystery girl can be the key to the whole riddle.

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  10. What flowing piece of writing, each stanza merging with the next. Love this, Kerry!

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  11. the storytelling is marvelous and compelling ~

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  12. This is like a grand journey of life carried out in a poem Kerry! Gorgeous!

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  13. One card is a door, a spread perhaps is a fate, its entanglement through tale. You hold these cards close to the chest where they throb ... There was a season when I read only Spanish-language poets, Lorca after Machado and Neruda. Such dry fertile promontories of the soul -- like moonlight ...

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