ManicDDaily

Wood Be Harry (Caught by Houdini’s Lure)

Caught by Houdini’s lure
before he even heard the name–
he climbed from crib, rolled from
stroller, finessed
his way from fingertips, magicking red
the faces of his parents once again, when, as
six-year old, he found the manacles
in their bedroom drawer and showed them
how he could release his pale clasped
wrists without even a nudge of
the coupled key.

But to teach his lungs to burst
their bounds
would take some work.  And privacy.  How
could he practice
in a public pool?  A pond aligned with
a window?  A river by any road?
No.  He took his tank–aquarium
salvaged from dentist’s dumpster–
to a high far glen, where sounded only
the spark of bird, the knock of woodpecker, the rare
ullulation of wild turkey blustering through
the bush.  Carting up
the water had been a bitch.

But worth it, he thought, lowering head
beneath the slosh, as a reverse bubbling slipped
between the press of lips, and freedom itself,
escaping the crimp
of the wide world, took refuge in
his second-counting soul,
and bloomed.

He could go on this way,
he thought, forever–until,
suddenly, captured wave caressing
his proud teen’s musclebound
limbs, the image of his parents’ manacles
came to mind, the fraught stillness of
their years-ago bedroom drawer, and, with a spluttered
cough half-trapped in his
tight throat, he realized, ruefully,
that much much more practice
would be necessary.

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Here’s my offering for Tess Kincaid’s Magpie Tales, 114.   My iPad painting is based on Tess’s prompt, an image by Alex Stoddard.  This is also my 22nd poem – I’ll call them that, though some have been very prosey – for National Poetry Month!