The Crossroad Tarot By Sage card illustrated by Sage Sweetwater
http://sagesweetwater.tripod.com/tarotbysage/

Blue Corn Woman puts the Jeep
through the paces hoping she
can catch up to the Thunderbird.

No rangers control access or
enforce rules.  The jackrabbits
flatten when her tires careen
over them because they are in
the wrong place at the wrong time.

She gears down and makes the turn,
noticing the dust on the trail, clocking
the pronghorns at twenty-six miles
per hour.

Wishful thinking leads her to believe
the dust is coming from the speeding
Thunderbird, only to discover it is being
kicked up by the pounding pronghorn hoofs
heading toward the Gila River, but still
she insists it's the wild, musky scent of
Valentina Harmony.

For a desert lesbian to separate the mirages
from the tangible requires her to lose
more and more of her mind.

Blue Corn Woman senses she is on a
spiritual road, so she drives on ahead
until the heat waves decompose where
the road ends at the front door of an
adobe dwelling.

Like a mischievous puppy, she puts her hands on
the window and peers inside.  The religious symbolism weighs spiritual on her soul.  Hundreds of silver crosses hang on the inside adobe walls and hundreds more are scattered out on long wooden tables.

Blue Corn Woman has never seen so many designs of crosses.  There are La Primavera crosses, primavera meaning "spring" in Spanish, Latin Crosses, Navajo crosses, simple-wire Celtic crosses, the Christ Church Centennial cross, the Catholic cross, and the Greek Cross, the Vampire Cross, Victorian crosses of the 17th century, all ranging from rococo to simple.

Rubber molds, wax, plaster, and slag from molten silver leads her to believe the artist who lives here is a silversmith whose concept is much more than making a piece of jewelry.

Blue Corn Woman inhales the holy smell of the prairie.  It is powerfully scented in the same liturgical way as ironwood prayer smoke in her peyote altar.  Surely, to find Valentina Harmony, she will have to fix with certainty, the tokens and solid clues and distinguish the mirages from the tangible, and this is one of those times.  The "crossroad" appears to be a vision to the next phase, the turning point of the journey.

Copyright 2006 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist, brainchild of Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties, flagship of Stone Creek Woman