Minor Prophet

I would read tea leaves if I didn’t keep chugging them down.
Or, what if ox belly hair balls were actual oracles
or were translatable
and flipped over were the cups and swords and coins and wands?
During dry meet-and-greets and endless lectures, those stifling
department meetings, which I lead,

I sometimes trace the thin valleys in my palms and fingers,
more aging creases that cut no secret stories to unfold.
Since, gave up the horoscopes,
fortune cookies and magic eight balls swishing triangle answers
and grandma’s surefire peeking backwards down a Tennessee well
with a looking glass.

Verily, verily, Time’s winged bitch may be hauling ass
and rosebuds may need picking before a Western sun cracks another night,
so these lines forever
sit on unturned slips of pages bent back wondered, hopefully loved,
muttering no truth, certainly no future to behold, beyond
one man’s minor song.