In July
~ Edward Dowden

Why do I make no poems? Good my friend

Now is there silence through the summer woods,

In whose green depths and lawny solitudes

The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend

Now from no hollow where glad rivulets wend,

But murmurings low of inarticulate moods,

Softer than stir of unfledged cushat broods,

Breathe, till o’er drowsed the heavy flower-heads bend.

Now sleep the crystal and heart-charmed waves

Round white, sunstricken rocks the noontide long,

Or ‘mid the coolness of dim lighted caves

Sway in a trance of vague deliciousness;

And I,–I am too deep in joy’s excess

For the imperfect impulse of a song.

Hermitage
~ Joseph Fasano

It’s true there were times when it was too much
and I slipped off in the first light or its last hour
and drove up through the crooked way of the valley

and swam out to those ruins on an island.
Blackbirds were the only music in the spruces,
and the stars, as they faded out, offered themselves to me

like glasses of water ringing by the empty linens of the dead.
When Delilah watched the dark hair of her lover
tumble, she did not shatter. When Abraham

relented, he did not relent.
Still, I would tell you of the humbling and the waking.
I would tell you of the wild hours of surrender,

when the river stripped the cove’s stones
from the margin and the blackbirds built
their strict songs in the high

pines, when the great nests swayed the lattice
of the branches, the moon’s brute music
touching them with fire.

And you, there, stranger in the sway
of it, what would you have done
there, in the ruins, when they rose

from you, when the burning wings
ascended, when the old ghosts
shook the music from your branches and the great lie

of your one sweet life was lifted?

On Europa and Ripe Peaches
~ Marsha S.

What a burning, broken universe—
incalculable, devastating,
things we can’t imagine.
We attach names familiar to us
Titan, Europa, Calypso
but they are still mighty and immeasurable, terrifying—

but don’t think of all that.
It’s too big.
It’s too sad.

Think of this:

It’s sublime and impossible that we even exist
with our
soft flesh and our wet eyes,
our music, our sins,
our jealous lovers,
our moments of bliss,
and love— god, love…
more immeasurable
more incalculable
than the universe,
than whatever it is
that the universe wonders about.

Our smallness shouldn’t humble us.
We are tiny demigods
watching the universe expand
from our lawn chairs
while we eat ripe peaches
with sticky hands and smiling mouths.

Peach by Rosemary Washington

Lessons from My Grandmother, #12
~ Salma Deera

they keep calling you a breeze
because they’re frightened of
what you might do when you
discover you are a hurricane.

The World card can be difficult to interpret when it comes up. This spread can help you better understand the World card as it usually appears in Rider-Waite-Smith style decks.

RWS 1910 Popular Deck

World Dancer Spread

Separate the deck into five piles – the Majors and each Suit. Shuffle each pile so the cards are in random order.

	4
2	5	3
	1

Card 1 corresponds to the foot that is down, and is pulled from Pentacles. This is what grounds you.Separate the deck into five piles – the Majors and each Suit. Shuffle or mix the cards in each pile so that they are in random order.

Card 2 corresponds to the staff/scroll in the right hand, and is pulled from the Swords. This is the mental energy that pulls you.

Card 3 corresponds to the scroll in the right hand, and is pulled from the Cups. This is the emotional energy that propels you.

Card 4 corresponds to the crown, and is pulled from the Wands. This is the spiritual energy that guides you.

Card 5 corresponds to the dancing figure, and is pulled from the Majors. This represents the archetypal energies to tap into to move forward.