Presentiments

For the April 'poem a day' challenge this year, I'm writing haibun to explore and reflect on my new Tarot deck, Forests of Enchantment. 

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Oh, what a fearsome version of the Death card! It must be the original black dog. That’s nowadays a symbol of clinical depression, but this version is an otherworldly creature of English folklore; appropriately, a portent of death.

The Death card doesn’t mean one’s physical mortality but rather the death of an old way of life or way of being – likely attended by some mourning for what is lost, but you’re not supposed to get stuck there. It’s really a card of transformation; you’re supposed to move through the grief and experience some form of rebirth. 

In this deck, however, it’s suggested that the card might sometimes portend a physical death, and that we should at least reflect on the fact that ‘All things pass in their proper time.’ Making friends with that fact, the author tells us, ‘will lessen unwarranted fears’. 

It’s the death of others that most concerns me – whether I fear losing loved ones who are still alive, or mourn those who have already left us. But as I move into my octogenarian years, it would be foolish not to recognise that I myself won’t be here forever. (Not in this form, anyhow.) I should pay some consideration to my ageing, at least, and how best to ensure my security and comfort. Staying as healthy and independent as possible for as long as possible is a way that appeals to me! Again, it’s not the fact of dying that bothers me, so much as the manner in which I continue to live. 

Mind you, I’d like to stick around for quite a while yet. Or I think I would. But perhaps I’d prefer to exit before living through any more bushfires, floods or pandemics? 

It’s out of my hands. I just hope no ferocious beasts come chasing after me! 

autumn evening –

the street draws its curtains

against the cold