Dazzling

The Death Card

She says don't worry, what it means is change.
The card sits in the centre of the spread
where chance or hell or heaven have arranged
to place an image of the grinning dead.

A skeleton, made crude, leans on a scythe.
I check the reader's face for fear or guile;
the foreground's hands and feet, all severed, writhe,
while skull and tarot-reader wear a smile.

She says, there's something coming to an end,
you're going through transition, cast adrift.
The metaphor is trite, she is no friend,
her leering skeleton a deadly gift.

She says, you're in the path of sweeping change,
but I see death, so centred, and so strange.