Believe in Magic? How Could I Not?

The prompt for this poem came from Suleika Jaouad’s Isolation Journal. The inspiration is a poem from Dean Young called Belief in Magic and I’ve stolen his first line for my title.

A few weeks ago, as I was sitting in my living room/library, I happened to notice that a tiny dot of lamplight was reflecting off the spine of one of my books. I got up and it was Jane Eyre. That got me started, Young’s staccato magic led me onward.

Of all the paperbacks
in all the world
stuffed onto a tiny shelf
above my couch,
it is only Jane Eyre
reflecting star light
in Charlotte Bronte’s O’s 

Foreshadowing fire much?

A beacon
A lighthouse
A Woolfish citadel
Crystalline tower
Meteor shower
Cat’s eye
Fireflies

Once, a long time ago,
I wrote a story
about a brown-eyed man
I exchanged pleasantries with
at the bus stop.
I wrote that he came to my door
like a pilgrim
bearing a loaf of banana bread.

A decade later, here he is,
with a fragrant offering
topped with a brown sugar 
streusel and chopped almonds.

Sure, in the interim
there were break-ups
and make-up sex,
canned soup, peanut-butter 
sandwiches, late night
crying jags over 
the only man I’d ever met
who could read e.e. cummings
aloud.

Certainly, I think, there are easier ways
to manifest banana bread.

Oh, what a mad woman
Loud human

Daring surfer
Unrepentant curser

Diligent scribe
Messy and alive.

But is she magic?
Maybe.  She lives in my attic.



Photo by yours truly