The Soothsayer

Others buried their gaze in the constellations,

Others, again, looked into alignments,

Others still, wondered at numbers and sums,

Other eventually stared at cloud patterns,

Others' devotion lay in the paths of the palm.

He, on the other hand, looked into streams,

under the bark of the willow trees,

snapping twigs, uprooting lilacs for inspection,

tasted and observed the water in the ponds,

pried into the entrails of dead cattle.

He would often lie down on the ground

and examine what his hands raked in,

would ruffle dry leaves at his ears.

He, spurned, would stand atop coombs

and listen to the variations in the wind

for portents of war, peace, happenstance.