Some losses are worse than others.
My Scorpio earring disappears, absent
from my reflection in the bathroom mirror.
Before I turned it into an earring, I wore it
as a pendant. Maybe that was safer.
My son David found it when he was nine
on the dirt bottom of the deep pool
at Howard Springs in the Territory,
surfaced and handed it straight to me.
It might have been there hours or years.
The copperplate inscription on the back said,
‘To Roy, with love from Les. (No information.)’
Eventually I had it smoothed off, leaving
the back of the disc plain. On the front,
the Scorpion is raised, bas-relief, in silver.
This earring brought me a dear friend
when I stood next to her in the checkout line
at Coles twelve years ago, and she –
a stranger then – said, ’I’m a Scorpio too!’
‘Only thing to be,’ I replied, and we began.
I hate it being lost. I feel it’s my magic earring.
(I wear it with a silver pentacle in the other ear.)
It’s somewhere the house; I haven’t been out.
Oh, wait. To the letter-box. It’s dark now, I’ll check
tomorrow. I ask the angels: ‘Help me find it soon!’
Next morning: I did once find a 'lost' earring on the ground by the letter-box. Not this time.
Next afternoon: Whew! It turned up! In a place I would have thought so impossible that I now believe the fairies were playing a game with me. Not the first time, over the years, that missing objects have emerged later in absolutely impossible locations. This time, a friend said 'a little spell' for me — and I know she is one who is favoured by the fairies because of her gardening and love for Nature.
