For VerseLove on Ethical ELA today, host Wendy Everard invited participants to “Take some time to rabbit hole online.  Discover some places that were inspirational to your favorite author or poet.  You can write about a place you’ve visited or one that you’ve discovered today, through some research.”

Ah. See if you know this place and, more importantly, the person that inspires me.

Remember the Signs

Sometimes
there is
a magic
that
chases you
from one
world
to another

such as when
you visit
a Tex-Mex restaurant
in North Carolina

dedicated to Elvis

and as
the hostess
leads your party
to your table
you happen
to notice

high on the wall
above all the 
hodgepodge
framed photos
that aren’t even 
of Elvis at all
but instead are 
of food 
and dogs 
and cars
(the ceiling
is a mass
of actual
gleaming chrome
hubcaps)

…that high
on the wall
above these
eccentric displays
is a wooden sign

and that
is when
you know
you know
you know
magic is 
afoot

the air begins
tingling with it

and if
you can somehow
explore this wall
without being noticed
by anyone else

you might
very probably
find, if conditions
are right,

a hidden door…

It is here,
somewhere,
I am sure.

Someday,
so help me, 
I shall find it

I shall get in

to find myself
I suspect

in the Rabbit Room
of an Oxford pub
where a group of men
light their pipes and order
another beer as they
debate the manuscript
on magic chasing you
from one world
to another

by mysteriously
connected rooms
and secret portals…

inside the Tex-Mex
Elvis restaurant
I stand staring
at this sign
(later,
I will have trouble
remembering
if I actually
saw it)

knowing magic
is afoot

—it’s more than
a pretty strong
inkling…

A photo of the actual sign — and door—! on the wall inside the Tex-Mex Elvis restaurant in NC.

*******

*REVEAL* — in case you did not know:

The Rabbit Room was a private lounge in the back of the Oxford, England pub, The Eagle and the Child (nicknamed The Bird and the Baby), where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and others (“The Inklings”) met regularly to share their working drafts. My poem’s title, the tingling magic, the door leading to another world are all Narnia/Lewis references. Even “I shall get in” is taken from Lewis, whom I’ve loved since age ten. The manuscript being debated in the poem is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe – Tolkien didn’t like it and basically told Lewis it would never work. While writing the poem I actually forgot what the sign (“NARNIA”) looked like in my local Tex-Mex-Elvis restaurant; I recalled it as an obscure reference to that magical world. I had to scroll around for the photo I took, to remember…but even my forgetting the sign ties directly into the plot of one of The Chronicles of Narnia books (The Silver Chair).

The sign’s presence in this odd place is definitely magical to me…one day…I shall get in…