Today’s choice
Previous poems
Ilse Pedler
Fortune Teller at the Mediaeval Fayre
She offered up her linen bag to me, said
pick a shell my lady and I’ll tell your fortune;
my fingers skimmed scalloped edges
the bold domes of limpets but settled
on a smaller more fragile find –
the wing of a mussel.
A good choice my lady she said
as I placed it on her worn and shiny palm.
What colour do you see?
I glanced at its plainness, Black, I replied
Black is for courage. I see much courage in your life,
courage in what has passed, courage for what is to come.
I thought of untidy brown hair, the way your eyes
crinkled at the corners when you smiled,
a willow coffin spread with wild flowers,
music and the silence that followed.
And see these lines? Lines are for a journey
The journey will be long with many a struggle
but footsore you will press on. Mayhap it is a journey
in this lifetime, mayhap your journey into the next.
I wondered at the broadness of her prophesies
but as she handed me back the shell saying
and now this is yours to keep for it has told your story
and is no longer mine – my eyes filled with tears.
I looked at it again, surprised by its complexity,
purple stripes fanning to a perfect curved edge
the pearly shine inside, the way it saved
the best of itself for the soft flesh it once cradled,
the contrast with the hardness of the outer shell
which in the end – couldn’t protect you.
Ilse Pedler lives in Cumbria and works part time as a veterinary surgeon. Her first collection Auscultation was published in 2021 by Seren. She is the poet in residence at Sidmouth Folk festival and is one of the editors of Bending the Arc a magazine of Thrutopian writing. www.ilsepedler.com
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