James Gardner: Lesser Figures of the Greater Trumps

Gabriel polishes me every day with the vigor of a man who needs to keep his hands busy. He doesn’t sleep well.

21. The Wreath on the Card Called the World: A woman dances, holding a baton. She is clad only in a tastefully draped ribbon.

I surround her, a green wreath with the silhouette of an egg.

In the four corners of the sky, faces look at us: a lion, an eagle, an angel, and a bull.

So. Which one of us is “the world”?

Me? The woman? The watchers? All of us? Some mysterious whole that encompasses us?

Or simply the ink that depicts us and the cardboard that gives the ink something to cling to?

Philosophers may amuse themselves making arguments for each possibility. Theologians may obtain their god’s version of the truth and expound it from the pulpit. Cynics may say that the designers of the Tarot didn’t know what the hell the world was about, so they took the opportunity to draw another naked woman.

Anything’s possible.

Anything’s possible.

Anything’s possible.

“Lesser Figures of the Greater Trumps”:This is what one calls a prose poem… or at least what I call a prose poem, for lack of a better name. At the time I wrote it, I could be pretty confident most readers would be familiar with the Rider-Waite tarot deck. I don’t know if that’s true anymore. The world seems to have acquired a disdain for such things; and not for healthy reasons like sincere rationalism, but simply because disdain comes so easily. Pity.