Past Lives
PAST LIVES
Oh, what might I have been?
Get the Ouija board, the planchette
Exhort the spirits of Cayce and MacLaine
Take a float through the baffling arcane
The past must suit male fancy
“Madam Zolta consult thy crystal clairvoyant
Bring forth those vaporous hosts
The filmy, the whispering, shapeless ghosts”
I yearn to hear some lordly title
Her quartz then flares, receding to shade
“Well, madam, be he of humble or regal fame?
Ego falters now, but give me his name”
So faint now that after breath
Seems to tremble Zolta’s damson drapes
And slowly in the middle half-sphere
Does an almost human face appear
The mouth is that first takes clear form
Those tissue lips in upward curve
Zolta’s chamber sudden quiet as a tomb
A perfumed vapor haunts the room
“I am that which once you were,”
Escapes the quivering gossamer line.
“And I the single past life you’ll see
A dainty, silly Scotch lass – tee hee”
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