The Magicians’ Union
Our idea was, luck and effort were cousins.
Your mother’s perfume gave you
strength. As you started tapping ground,
your eyesight returned, then your
sense of touch resumed from the fingertips on in
and trumpets embroidered our bewilderment.
The next day I pulled an idea of love off a shelf.
Amplified, it lasted longer than others.
I stepped offstage, onto the porch, but
my big toes had little minds
of their own, so I watered the flowers
that grew where my parents
lay dead, and the wind sat with me,
showing me how its miniature world
rattled like something unknown.
At dawn, light grew fickle and absorbent.
Inside the summer morning lay an infant
asleep in the corners of what we remember,
learning to love what hides, what melts,
what yearns to be repaid.
James Cushing
from The Magicians’ Union