Page of Swords tarot inspired art by Sharon Eisley

When I first started reading tarot, I pulled cards to describe the people in my life, and for my youngest child, now 19, I got the page of swords. Oh yes, this was most accurate! This child had such an insatiable curiosity abouAre you the poet or the plumber? We are losing our lease on our current gallery space and I brought up this concept in our emergency meeting. Are you the plumber, who will figure out exactly how much rent we can afford on a new space and the square footage and storage needs? Or will you be the poet, inspiring us with your brainstormed ideas of a combined gallery/bookstore/florist, a special maker space room and cafe counter, or doubling the member artist size and starting a non profit art center? The plumber poet concept originated from Stanford's organizational theorist James G. March. He lays out the need for both poet and plumber in leadership. But our Page of swords is most definitely the poet!

t the world that I had to keep a list of their interests to keep from going insane. Thank god for libraries and Google search! All in one day they went from: “Mom! Mom! Can I raise penny quails? I've drawn up the aviary I want to build, can you take me to the hardware store?” to “Mom! Look, I am collecting snails from the backyard! I am going to paint different colors of nail polish on their shells and track them through the neighborhood” to “Mom! I'm going to start a business raising and selling garden snails to the mothers at the French charter school!” to “Mom, I'm going to start a bog garden, I’ve read all about it, I’ll use the bath tub.”

This is the lovely, if exhausting, side of this precocious page. To this day my youngest's mind is filled with really interesting “fun facts” that seem to pop up for every conversation. Recently they knew there was a map of old growth trees all over the world, which we followed across Ireland. Who knew? The page of swords knew! And we followed them into an ancient Irish peat bog they had studied. Just two days ago they gave a lecture on the research they are conducting in their chemistry/mycology lab job at a fungi convention. But the page of swords is often full of wind, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. These pages are often quite inexperienced. The beautiful beginner's mind can also be a sharp annoying sword poking at you, as all these sword cards, like swords, are two sided. Michelle Tea writes in her book Modern Tarot, "If you find one of these types close by, avoid arguing with them; they've got more bluster in them than you and will keep the debate going until you pull your hair out in aggravation. Try to keep away from them and pray to the goddess that they will grow up or move on. This too was sadly true of my youngest. They won most arguments by wearing me out. This is the kid that talks back to their elders and always thinks they know better than the teacher, and sometimes, maybe often, does. Luckily my youngest HAS grown up and ‘mostly’ learned to balance their intense poet spirit with their inner plumber.

So I painted this young page from a photo of my youngest at their fun fact best, about 10, sitting atop a stack of knowledge, cutting out images of a Fairy Tern from a book supported on clouds. Aren't they a bit destructive? But look how the wind catches what was once just book learning, an image on a page, and flies away with it. And the Tern turns real. White Fairy Terns are cousins of the Terns that migrate mind-bending distances. Fun Fact! Arctic terns from Greenland were shown by radio geolocation to average 70,000 km (43,000 mi) on their annual migrations. But the all white Fairy Terns have adapted to live and nest on their beautiful tropical islands. They have the soul of the poet but are grounded and stable where they are. And so this page's bare feet are on the earth, grounded, but their head is in the golden sky, their scissors a blade of knowledge collaging together a new reality.

Turning the Page,

a Tern of the season.

Spring is newly green hills not aware it turns

to summers’ gold.

You have paper wings.

Your mind is packed

with facts,

confident,

sharp scissors

Cutting reality into

Fascinating pieces,

Flying away on the