by Cindy Washabaugh 

How Magic Works: Late September Day, 1996, Doan Brook Gorge Ravine

When you were eight you still believed.  That afternoon in the ravine
beneath the ledges, the sky a bright, barking blue, clouds peaked stiff
and strange, summer’s humidity sucked from the air.  The only

dampness wrapped around the boulders by the stream where you found
the stone—the same gray slate as a thousand others, but shaped like
a key, a full, broad head and stem cut by nature to glide into some

matching lock.  All afternoon you tried your luck, finding crevices
in the ledges and wriggling the stone key in, sure each time it would click
and turn, open a magic door to gleaming Arabian treasure. I watched

for the moment when you’d finally give up, wished to keep you
from that sadness.  Suddenly, you just set the stone down to pick up
a lumpy toad.  “Maybe he’s a wizard,” you said, “maybe he’s a prince.”

Cindy Washabaugh is a Cleveland poet who leads programs in the creative arts and has a particular passion for therapeutic writing. She has developed and taught courses in healing and exploring through poetry for Cleveland State University and other organizations. Her work has appeared in numerous national journals, including The Spoon River Poetry Review, Confrontation and The Connecticut Review, and locally in the anthologies, Voices of Cleveland, (Cleveland State University Press), and Cleveland in Prose and Poetry, (League Books). She is a member of Take Nine, a group of nine Cleveland women poets who have been reading, writing and performing together for twelve years.