Flight to the Enchanter

Yesterday, I read for fun and profit,
tarot at the Oz Park festival.
Wore a dragon ring
with a small crystal ball,
and a cape and gown
fit for a Druid Queen.

While I dragged bales of hay
to build my tarot booth,
I lost the stone to my dragon ring,
But I heard the call
of a silver Druid ball,
sold at another stall.
Filled with chimes,
the sphere also filled the hole.
And my ring rang.

As the bearded silver smith affixed it,
He said, "We only carry them for a while,
they have their own way home, you know."

Home? Home. Beyond where
the hints lie and doors open
at the corner of my eye.
If I had watched where my stone fell,
would it have taken me this time,
where the white rabbit took Alice?

A friend had warned me about my work,
"Dangerous place for a fallen Druid Queen."
And he'd rung off before I could ask,
'which job do you mean?'
The fantasy of the festival
or my everyday timeclock job?

And as I work, today, I wonder
what became of the n's in component?
I keep writing com poet.
Beasticore appears
in the annual reports I type.
The whole day is a chant
of halfseen, half heard miswords.

Tonight's movie heroine cries,
"This is everything I didn't want:
Pain, lying, complications."
But I know she'll go to him
that mountebank, enchanter, anti-hero.
Despite it all. To spite me:
the fallen Druid Queen.

As I try to keep to my work
between the lines
Oz moments click,
ruby slippers
to where my real home is.