SleepingOrchid

Foxglove = MEDICINE “Intervention”

“Students of the night must learn to learn”. The Foxglove may be beautiful but is hardly an innocent flower. It gets its name from the legend that foxes use the bells to sheathe their paws so that they can slither through the garden without detection.

This elegant flower has caused poisonings and even death in humans and livestock. There have even been examples of poisoning from inhalation of the dried plant! But the active principle, digitalis, is the main ingredient in heart regulation medicine; a perfect example of how from the heart of danger we can seize opportunity, even redemption.

We find ourselves these days in an endless pandemic, a New Normal caused by aggressive human interference with our planet’s wildlife. By a miracle, the same pharmaceutical companies that have been competitively bleeding all of us dry have come up with a vaccine that seems effective at keeping most of us out of the hospital. Wouldn’t want to kill the golden geese! But it doesn’t work if you don’t take it and, wonder of wonders, a substantial number of Americans have now become suspicious of the medical establishment! Since insurance companies have been advertising for years that healthcare is “our choice” based on “what plan we can afford” I for one am not surprised. This is the only possible end result of a gated health care system that actively despises “Public” health as “radical socialism”!

So where is our Soul & our Soulmate in all this, our little, fragile, mortal, human body that drew the foxglove card only this morning? Medicine can be a necessary “intervention”, if we cultivate for ourselves a recognition of the difference between “health”and”sickness”. We may create a “perfect world” with our Soulmate but does that mean we can let no others in? A moment’s thought demonstrates that we must keep the freshening breezes of this world blowing as long as we are here! “Help” will always be needed and hopefully, offered.

Therefore we interpret this card to be about learning to trust the Helpful Intervener. We don’t want to create a love nest so fragile it is threatened by any outsider. Instead, we want to make certain we avail ourselves of every good advancement and improvement opportunity.

ALYSSUM

What wound is this?
Flowering? Flowering?
I wake at two am
To find a curvilinear clamp
Half hoop clenching
My right side.
Immobilized.

It could be the strain of
Fishing for a future
Trying to hook sky through a
Porthole window or
I could be over-organized.
Doctors dismissed me in
My mother’s name.
“You dare to be angry?
You dare to grow old?
You are a false alarm.”

I say a prayer to the great night heron
Pregnant thief of dreams – a
Solitary hunter calling to collect me.
He rises
To unleash the silken sinews
Of submission from my torn and
Tethered wing –
Feathered like a revelation
Stippled like the phases of the moon
Birthing spirit
In his cloud of fire.