Susan P. Bachelder

Mercury in the 12th – May 9, 2020

Mercury is in the 12th today

chatting with the dead

while they wait in line for Charon to show up.

His boat filled with refugees washed onto the beaches of Lesbos

left no room for the aged of Italy who

silently drift up to the full Flower Moon to wait

for a ride.

While hospital orderlies without masks

several Swedes from Malmo

and more Russians than anyone knew were sick

stand waiting for what seems to them an eternity.

Mercury in the 12th house encourages your mind to work below the surface of conscious awareness. Insights arrive through dreams, quiet moments, and intuition rather than step-by-step logic.  

After a 30-year career in international film and advertising, Susan P. Bachelder presently works with the Sozzani Ruhs Foundation of Milan and Paris as English text editor on projects for the Galleria.  As a long-standing member of Dark Sky, her personal interests in retirement have been focused on protecting and promoting star gazing in our classic understanding of this art, and she is presently engaged in supporting the development of dark sky parks in Bhutan.

Stephen Mack

Just Passing Through

Just passing through this tunnel of flesh,
Herbivore carnivore like all the rest,
Chasing the light around the next bend
Til the oncoming headlight fills the shaft up ahead
And seals the return route with my shadow,
Amen.
Like a straw in a hurricane this projectile can bend
Force the lock to the chamber where the Will makes amends
Blows out the particles, remnants of heads
Lost in vain service to the tunnel’s bright end,
Caught dead on the tracks,
Thinking ‘two’ til the end.
That moment of impact when the wall crashes in
And the dust of illusion is gone with the wind
And the ties that have bound are the stairs to the den
Where the bones hold the secrets, tell the stories of when
The herbivores carnivores let the planet descend
To the stage before rapture, plain of fire and torment
And the thousand years waiting in the wakes of the dead,
Til once again Light fills the tunnel ahead,
Incarnation’s shadows disappear round the bend,

When the wall writing brakeman forms a V, the tracks end.

Stephen Mack is a life long fan of the word ‘ineffable’ while pursuing careers in music and woodworking. He now enjoys the daily exercise of poeming.

Thumbnail image: Charon ferrying the dead across the River Styx, 1880. Alamy Stock Photos.