Elegy for a Small Town Psychic
       

Weekdays you rummaged through the universe
    spinning around inside your crystal ball
for Lotto numbers, the checkout girl's lost purse,
    some plumber's vagrant niece who wouldn't call.
    Alas, the turban and the sequined shawl
are all packed up now with your uncashed checks,
sandalwood incense, candles, tarot decks.

The past is where we left it — swept away
    under some cosmic couch or coffee table
where, fuzzed with lint, it will most likely stay.
    Who will reclaim for us, Clairvoyant Mabel,
    those trivial hours, and polish them to fable —
the New Year's kiss, the wealthy man's dropped glove
we might have turned to money or to love?

And the future? Time grinds forward on its track,
    keeping to schedule though you've stepped off board.
Great sage of horoscope and zodiac,
    nine hundred number, palm, and credit card
    — prophet the constellations once adored —
who will conduct us now on our destined way?
The tight-lipped stars have nothing left to say.

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Copyright © 2013 Morri Creech All rights reserved
from The Sleep of Reason
Waywiser Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission