I first encountered this Lotería card at a very difficult point in my life. The interpretation I was presented from it was: you know what you need to do; now do it. I did, and I keep this image handy ever since to remind myself.
Traditionally/Literally this card is read:
Al nopal lo van a ver, nomás cuando tiene tunas.
People go to see the prickly pear only when it bears fruit .
You know what needs to be done. Do It.
Mark Folse is a provincial diarist and aspiring minor poet from New Orleans. His past blogging adventures included the Katina/Federal Flood blog wetbankguide on blogspot.com which David Simon told NY Magazine was one of three blogs that helped inform Treme, and Toulouse Street–Odd Bits of Life in New Orleans, which once outranked the Doobie Brothers on Google Search. His work has appeared in The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, The New Delta Review, Metazen, New Laurel Review, Ellipsis, What We Know: New Orleans as Home, Please Forward, The Maple Leaf Rag IV, and A Howling in the Wires (which he co-edited).
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Well Bottom Blues 
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