The Ropes by Ramona McCallum

Suddenly Houdini is here in the car

with us, as I pull into the grocery store

parking lot. You’ve got a library book

in your lap, and he emerges from the realm

of what you didn’t know before.

 

Wow, Mom, look!

 

I can’t find ingredients for supper

and with those pages in front of your face

you keep bumping into the cart.

But you’re making this moment

incredible, stupendous, mystifying

and I can’t bring myself to tell you,

watch where you’re going.

I can’t argue when you announce

in the check out aisle you’ll be

a magician when you grow up.

 

Because you already are—

 

You’ve made a decade disappear

like a rainbow of scarves stuffed

into a hat. Ta-daa!

A dove flies out and we

never see him again.

 

Shortly after your birth, one night I woke up

and wandered through the house, window

to window, searching for the baby

of my womb—until I remembered you

had already been born. I returned

to bed and found a creature breathing,

conjuring life out of hazy autumn air.

 

Three years later, on vacation to Chicago, I leashed

your wrist to mine, but somehow you wriggled loose

and were out of your seat. Up on stage, before

I could grab you, there you were

at the children’s theater, bowing

with the other performers.

 

And now Ladies and Gentlemen,

 

in front of our very eyes, this boy’s face

becomes a young man’s. I watch his jaw

lengthen and set. His eyes reach past me

to a place of his own determination,

 

where my own hands are tied,

my purpose over, having introduced

this death-defying escape artist

to the world.

Ramona McCallum writes and raises six kids in windy Garden City with husband Brian, ceramic sculptor/art teacher. Ramona’s first collection of poetry, Still Life with Dirty Dishes, is forthcoming from Woodley Press

 

 

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