Your room, perpetually dark and musty,
Smoke-filled, windows tightly sealed
Against a rusted pane
Thin layers of onion-skinned dust
Cover your books on Mythology and the Occult,
Graves: “The White Goddess”, Gardner’s “High Magic Aid”,
“The Quest for Merlin” by Hovey
The glint of your watery eyes, steel-blue,
Held captive by the candle’s flame
Its flickering probes the surrounding space
Like spindly fingers feeling
Their way through a darkened room
You sit on the hardwood floor
Sketch, in Druid homage, a White Oak,
Your hand transmigrates across the leaf of paper
A shadowy ghost, weaving in and out,
Of winding passageways
Ink-black, intricate scrawls entwined
Becoming ever twisted and gnarled
You recreate the trees on the page
Seldom do you touch their rough bark
Venture rarely from this place
Awake at the hour of dusk
In the vanishing of light
Safe in the shadows
Lighting long tapered candles
To divine your tarot cards
The trees, hued in the afterglow,
Through the barrier of glass
Yellow and murky
With smoke