Starcatsastrology’s Blog

No One Can Tell Me Different
(For Valerie Rankin)

When the scent of cedar, juniper and sage
Perfume my windows,
As one lone crow gives way
To a murder assembled,
At the hour hummingbirds and butterflies
Circle the red feeder
I know it’s time

When my breath draws in as rippling sobs,
As roses in winds move to Tai Chi flow,
While Maples bend like supple yogis,
A tickling at the back of my neck begins

Druids say Samhain is when the veil
Blocking worlds is thinnest
I say any day, at any time (though unbidden),
The veil for me can part

I sense them. They’re coming to visit,
My eyes refill like long dried cisterns,
My throat is alive with cries,
Then a sudden explosion of wails and grief

They, the visitors, are like quantum;
Organized as conscious flickers,
They are clustered photons
Appearing in my mental passages

My father is there
And so is my brother
Cats, guinea pigs, dogs, squirrels, rabbits, birds,
All rescued, loved and restored in one life
Play over there in the other

The 82nd Street woods (an escape long vanished)
Is waiting over there intact.
All greet me, including the souls of trees,
Appearing renewed as in a wildflower spring
They all come
They all speak to me — in telepathy
No one can tell me different.

I’ve seen over there and I’ve come back
And I remember it clearly
I’ve seen Them in my dreams but also
During my vast and lonely midnights

It doesn’t matter how the paths on my side
Break through to this “other.”
They just do
And these membranes will leak again
And again,
And at times yet again,
Until the very last day,
When smiling, They come to shepherd me.

Claudia Dobkins Dikinis
August 27, 2016
Santa Monica, California