Magic Lessons
(Meditations from an afternoon stroll)
The car that passed thumped
a Fleetwood Mac bassline
and deep inside my cranium
I am still five years old
afraid of spaces that contain
only me; no guardian to hold.
I catch a whiff of vinegar,
and I think of my lover.
His naturally upturned mouth,
and his eyes soft like soil
after the storm has passed.
I look at the wildflowers,
and think of all the graveyards
I would like to contain me.
Heart no longer beating,
just a garden my grandmother
used to tend to, once teeming
with fuchsia and dandelion.
In my dreams that night, I tell auntie Ayreen
about she, who looked like
lavender skies. Her head haloed
with stray blonde strands,
iridescent under the setting sun.
There is magic in this earth.
It lives in pinecones, in the sound
of the TV from the next room,
and in fields overrun with weeds;
in the sea that roars itself a drumroll,
perpetually announcing its undulating waves.
The magic is the quiet victory of knowing
the guarantees of the earth.
The sun will rise and it will set,
grief will endure and so will love.
We’ve come so far
that we can see it all coming.
And yet – miraculously, tenderly,
this special pocket of the universe
surprises us anyway.
Theo Itchon is a poet from the Philippines working as a creative writing teacher to the Filipino youth. Their poems have been published in Thimble Lit Magazine, Eunoia Review, Unbroken Journal, The Cardiff Review, among others. Talk to them on Instagram @theoitchon.
south broadway press 