The Psychic Speaks to a Client
Wait! Your son is out on bail–How did I know? Never mind,
just worry not. Your Sonny will outgrow delinquency like his baby shoes.
He’ll wed a clever girl. Of course, you’re glad. Hush!
I see the newlyweds putting a down payment on a few acres.
They plant. Their rows of baby pines will grow up tall and travel
far: showing off, as the bells peal, perfect ornamental balls.
Hush! I see a shipwreck from a past life casting its long shadow
across your crib as your little fingers grip the bars
to keep yourself upright. You’re screaming. I’m not sure why.
Wait! I see a blue sail beyond the bitter salvos of mumsie and dad–
Interesting. Sailboats, you say, were the wallpaper pattern of your nursery.
My gift fascinates you? I tell you it’s not always a gift to sail time’s
waters. I’m often marooned weeping in a cemetery at dusk. As shovels
painfully scrape, dirt and falling stones knock on my daughter’s little coffin.
–Oops, my new black top hat flies off–But a tombstone stops it,
while the gust skips off the bleak stage, as if in her ballet slippers.
You’ve returned for another session. Welcome. You’re curious?
My first vision? It was at a summer camp, I was a small-for-my-age 13:
“The Shrimp” as I was known. One day behind the tennis courts, I gorged
on handfuls of berries that had just been sprayed. My stomach convulsing,
glaring hopelessly into the berry bramble, I saw my fix-anything Uncle Balcom,
bare-chested on our garage roof, reeling in the heat of the sun’s glowering eye.
Taking a swig from his thermos full of vodka tonic, he fell.
Sure enough, a month later, cozily cushioned between the warm
thighs of Aunt Dell and his new girlfriend Kim, I discovered
spots of purplish, sour-looking human pain along those arms and legs
tangled and shaking on the asphalt drive.