This is a poem in this series of 144 poems that I’m writing based on the dodeks, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. As far as I know, everybody else calls them dodekatemoria, but that’s a very complicated word to say, so I just call them dodeks.
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Gemini of Gemini: Highways and Byways
00° Gemini 00′ to 2° Gemini 29′
The Earth is a puzzle of paths and roads,
by which mortals wander, hither and yon —
joining workshops with temples and abodes,
hilltop to coastline, and castle to town.
Some are narrow paths alongside steep slopes;
others, broad highways filled with inching cars —
it’s one of those deeply fictional tropes
that roads are empty. Drunk drivers leave bars
nearly all the time. So do teens, and wives,
and grandmas, and husbands, and physicians
all seeking destinations in their lives,
delayed — or sped along — by conditions
these forking paths put beyond their control;
traffic, and weather, and police patrol.
Image: Six people in four vehicles on a highway, facing good or bad journeys, are shown in different emotional states.
Important Relationships
- Part of Ptolemy’s Term of Mercury
- Part of Decan I of Gemini (administrated by Jupiter): The Apple of Eden
Colophon
This is a part of a series of poems based on the dodekatemoria, or twelfth parts, of the Zodiac signs. The dodekatemoria are sub-segments of the Zodiac, each representing two degrees thirty minutes (2° 30′) of arc; there are 144 dodeks (as I call them) in the full Zodiac, or twelve in each sign. Each dodek is supposed to be a recapitulation or miniature repetition or summary of its parent zodiac sign, as though it were filtered through the lens of the main sign.
The Sun crosses this distance of 2° 30′ in about two and a half days, making these dodeks cognate with the Moon, which crosses one sign of the Zodiac, or thirty degrees (30°) in about two and a half days. The Sun’s passage through a dodek thus mirrors the Moon’s passage through a sign, and squeezes a “mini-year” of passage through twelve signs into a single month.
Each series of dodeks begins at 0° 00′ of its parent sign with the same sign, and there are four dodeks in each sequence of 10° degrees. Each poem in this series will give a (my) name of the dodek, its relevant degrees, a sonnet describing it, a 1-2 sentence description of the dodek, and some other information.
