The Astrologist

Tracing a line with an elegant finger,
Then another, and again,
Each followed with delicate care,
She regarded her fanciful diagram,
 And told me that I am water.

 She said: You take the shape of the thing that holds you,
 You’re the color of what is inside you.
 You’re broken by an intrusion but, then,
 Reassembled by its passage.
 You’re geared to leave beads on windows and feathers on sand.

 She said: Yours is the Twelfth House, the one most dimly lit.
 It’s just down the street, dear, you can’t miss it.
 (You can’t miss what you can’t see!)
 That one, with the scrap of a garden – yes, that’s it, love,
 The house numbered twelve, tucked beneath the horizon.

 I’ve been here before.
 I know this house,
 Where in the space between dark and dawn,
 All of the hidden and formless things are found:
 Secrets, dreams, deceptions, great truths and small lies, and me.

 Maybe I’ll run.
 Maybe I’ll toss frilly things into a tattered bag, and
 Take off at midnight,
 Fly, with Neptune, to that place where magic resides,
 Escape into the warmth of the illusory.

 We’ll get drunk on storms, Neptune and me,
 We’ll wander, vague, among his earthquakes, and
 Sleep it off in the simplicity of
 His cool, quiet depths, wherein
 Confusion is believed a virtue.