My cave, lit by electric fire, lacks the jagged crack in the rock spewing noxious gasses, the gray steam of knowledge.
My chair is not a high tripod— wood and rope perching me over priests. I sit low, eye level, upholstered and ergonomic but no less mysterious for having traded robes and rolling eyes for slacks and glasses.
Pilgrims come to me bearing their offerings-- they have not had far to come, no swollen bloody knees, but they pray I will see them either as they really are—weak and newly born— or as they see themselves—rulers of small kingdoms.
They expect a spectacle-- my words rolling forth in drugged insight. Not the words of a mere mortal but words that demand interpretation signs scrawled incoherently on the paper handed to me. I must morph into priestess, interlocutor and translator.
Who could expect to understand the garbled grammar of any woman without prayer and contemplation?
-- Kristin LaTour’s poems are published or forthcoming at Fifth Wednesday, Cider Press, Adanna, qartsilluni, Medulla and Labletter. She has a chapbook forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press titled Agoraphobia.