The Seer Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Crow-black hair, jet-beady eyes
Crows' feet around her eyelids
This woman sits in her eyrie, a Scottish Sybil
Tarred with a Romany brush.

She scans me like an owl
Missing nothing, sensing mood and need
Detective of the psyche

I have come to seek her services
Raw with bereavement
I have come seeking connection

Her bloodless hands are porcelain white
Coddling the cracked, thin Tarot cards
‘Pick seven, ' she says, splaying them like a fan

They are black-backed as Bible covers
Well-thumbed from turnings and tellings

‘He's here, your son. He says he's not at rest.
He says he was not ready to cross over.'

Her eyes flick round the room
Like flies, lighting on dainties.

A transfusion of hope.Fact or subterfuge?
Yearning has summoned him here
Or not, to the land of Usher's Well
‘He stands beside you, radiates regret.'

Dealer in the currency of spirits
She plucks names from the air:
Dodd, Alex, Jimmy. Given my age
And locality, a safe assumption

Her bull's eye punchlines leave me speechless
How could she divine such private knowledge?

A black cat slides through a hedge in a misty field
The day breathes frost. It is the sere season

We inhabit the same room
My son and I, both stuck in limbo

Two kites, tails joined,
Snagged in grief's barbed wire

He, wishing for life
That I would die to give him.