Ace of Swords in Roswila's Taiga Tarot & "this wild speech ..." (non-dream tanka w/2-liner) by Roswila

this wild speech rising
out of your mouth is not yours
but his, reaching out
from beyond the last door
as he dared not when living

don't fear this bright shadow's words
but welcome their mystery


[tanka with two-liner based on a Tarot reading of 12-9-14. I'd been thinking a great deal about my brother who died just a year ago. Almost feeling haunted by him. So I did a Tarot reading to see if I could understand what he was saying to me. And what I was saying to myself about myself based on our sad and ultimately estranged relationship. I did not accomplish any of this, but the reading did help me to become comfortable with not knowing. This quote by the poet Rilke (in Letters to a Young Poet, 1903) says it all much better than I:

"…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."

And even should no answers come, that will be like so much else I live with. Secret ingredients in the elixir of life, if you will.

Image with tanka: the Ace of Swords, from my deck in (glacially slow) progress, The Taiga Tarot (tanka: "we fly or homestead/swim deep or burn/the midnight oil/what connects/is what pierces"), & Poem by Roswila]

PLEASE NOTE: in most browsers you can click on the above image for a larger version. Also, the photo accompanying a post is not necessarily meant to illustrate it, but to reflect some small, even slant aspect of the verse, similar to Japanese haiga (illustrated haiku).

There are many other sorts of posts on this blog. I indicate which are about or influenced by dreams. Some non dream focused posts are book reviews, "regular" poems (some by other writers, as the above is), scifaiku, writing exercises, Tarot haiku, photos, haiga, and so on. However, most of those are in much older posts. There's a listing by month going back to early 2006, at the end of the sidebar.

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until next time, keep dreaming,

[a/k/a Patricia Kelly]
**** If you wish to copy or use any of my writing or poems, please email me for permission (under “View my complete profile”). Roswila's connections & other blogs: Charter Member of the United Haiku and Tanka Society (UHTS); ROSWILA'S TAROT GALLERY & JOURNAL; ROSWILA'S TAIGA TAROT; and TRYING TO HOLD A BOX OF LIGHT.