Fortune Telling at Ora Cafe

FORTUNE TELLING AT ORA CAFE


You arrive all alone
full of fear and apprehension
in this cafe that promises
to foretell your future, as if
your goddamn life with all
its complexities can be reduced
to a pack of cards, the twisting
path of your destiny as clear-cut
as a crystal ball, your strange fate
a text written in the stars.

And so the psychic-seer
reads the signs of your chosen
form of oracle, predicting events
that may or may not happen,
depending on how you see things
as they occur; the accuracy
of his third eye a matter yet
to be seen, his prophetic words
a cipher yet to be decoded
in the succeeding days to come.

But you believe him,
at this particular point in time
yes, you completely believe him:
the major and minor arcana,
the alignment of the planets;
so you leave this cafe with a sense
of certainty that disappears
the very next day, in the tumult
and turbulence of tomorrow's
unpredictable unfolding.


-Ralph Semino Galan