The Gold Watch (or: why I stopped being a psychic)

Two little hands held tight like

a wet prayer. Paint cans whisper

hollow

tunes to her back; a tool bench, hands now idle, just

steps

away to her right

like silent sentinels.

The little red dress. Precious.

Just precious.

Black shiny shoes specked

with red and all is silent once more.

He spreads the photos

out across the dining

room table

Silence like a knife

It is his job

to take

these sprinkles of history and arrange

them, collage-like, into a pattern.

He is an archeologist of the dead.

The supplicants come heart in tooth

arms pasted loosely

to the left side

The mother's voice,

as always, is deep, throaty

like a wounded dog.

He sits

silent for a moment then gets up,

walks over

to grab a box of tissues.

She takes the tissues and blows her nose.

Phantoms on a carpeted walkway whisper to her as she walks.

The pictures will still come

to them both but no matter how they paint

the scene

the little red dress will never come

clean

again

the voice, like a wounded dog, he hears it

even

now

*  I wrote this poem originally back in the early '90's shortly after I decided to "retire" as a professional psychic.  I made an infomercial for a 1-900 number in 1992 and for about seven or eight months I worked on the phone lines for them and as one of their "featured clairvoyants"--clairvoyants are the Ferrarri's of the psychic world in that they can "see things" as opposed to other types of readers who go on impressons or feelings--I was usually the person who ended up working on any cases involving missing persons or criminal issues such as murder or abuse. 

Incredibly, to me, (as I had a baby girl of my own), there were an amazing number of cases that I worked on involving abuse with children--very young children (two, three and four years old).  Rape, physical and mental abuse, kidnapping and even murder. 

The poem above was written specifically in response to a case I worked on in my private practice for a three year old girl who was raped in her basement, a scene I described in great (and later quite verifiable) detail but it is applicable to all my cases back then involving young children. 

Eventually, after doing SO many of these types of readings I felt as if I had to stop.

Every time I tip toe back into the psychic world I remember those days and so I am sharing this poem from those dark days of mine all those many years ago.