The End of the Year
As the semester comes to a close, we face the end of another year. Days get darker faster, and the mystique of night holds us in its firm grip more vividly than before.
The longest night of the year is coming. It goes by many names: The Winter Solstice, Midwinter, Saturnalia, Yule. In the Zoroastrian tradition, it is known as Yalda.
Yalda reminds us that, even as we close the book on this year, we also prepare for the beginning of a new one. One important Yalda tradition is that of reading poetry – particularly Persian poetry – for good fortune.
In the spirit of looking toward dawn even in the blackest night, I decided to embark on a creative journey to close our year. I will use my favorite divination tool – Tarot – to help me come up with poems. I’ll publish as many times per week as I can, but my rough goal is at least two poems per week until the semester ends.
The rules I came up with are pretty loose. I like to let my deck choose for me, so I will shuffle my Phantomwise Tarot Deck and use intuition to guide which cards I pick. If the deck “spits” cards at me while I shuffle, I’ll include them.
Drawing the Cards
Each blog post will have which cards I drew, what deck I drew them from, their meanings, and my poem.
This first go round, it felt right to select three cards. It looks like it’s a Wands suit day, so we’ve got ahead of us:
- The Page of Wands Reversed:
- A lack of passion
- Creative blocks
- Scattered energy
- The Seven of Wands:
- Resilience/facing challenges
- Standing your ground/maintaining boundaries
- Persevering
- The Three of Wands:
- Expanding horizons/Exploring possibilities
- Plans become reality; progress
- Foresight
- Confidence
- New opportunities; travel
And out of that, I got this:
—
“I Find Myself Running Away From My Future Again”
—
This landscape lacks
Wind the gold of hair plucked too fine
Hounding the balding fields
I come to a wall
Built of shadow I cast myself
Shackled and spectral
—
A wall
Only as high as I am willing to climb
When the night turns lilac
And the moon’s disappearing act
Forbids the shadow’s mirage –
I’ll haunt this field until I’m dead and free
—
The sun opens up the pages
Carrying dandelion fluff on its back
Dawn defeating dust
I glimpse the sea
Expanding, aventurine, green
Verdant victory
Maggie DiRoma-Murphy is a senior at the University of West Georgia studying Mass Communications and Creative Writing. She is also the Program Director at WOLF Radio.
