Among my sister's gifts, received over the years, is a handmade wooden sign, suspended from a length of barbed wire, that says:
EXPECT
MAGIC
I forget how prevalent true magic, the magic of poets and poetry, of everyday life, of simply being and breathing and staring for a long time at the sky, is.
We are, in any moment, creatures bewitched. Without spells, without potions. What greater conjuring than to take the alphabet, shape it into words, the words into images, emotions, landscapes, journeys; the soaring and plunging of human - or not-quite-human - experience. Is there any source of wonder to equal the power to sift and sort what our hearts and minds contain and make it manifest, give it form, remove its invisibility? On the previously bare page now rests a thought or insight or attempt to interpret the ineffable.
A friend/angel/guide sends me a poem every day. Today brought this:
PENNILESS LOVERS
They had faces open to whoever passed.
They had legends and myths
and a chill in their heart.
They had gardens where the moon strolled
hand in hand with the water.
They had an angel of stone for a brother.
They had like everyone
the miracle of every day
dripping from the roofs;
and golden eyes
glowing with
a wilderness of dreams.
They were hungry and thirsty like animals
and there was silence
around their steps.
But at every gesture they made,
a bird was born from their fingers
and dazzled, vanished into space.
Eugenio de Andrade
"...at every gesture they made, a bird was born from their fingers..." was the phrase that reminded me of our ability to embroider what we consider ordinary, based entirely on the intensity of being here now, into something richer, finer, transcendent.
Our walls are leveled when we root among the tricks in our roomy satchels of self to pull forth something clear and true, not before spoken or told. We levitate, assume unfamiliar guises, expand, burst forth like a bouquet from the magician's sleeve, when we surrender and follow where the words lead.
They belong to a club of masters of the craft, those who allow their souls to materialize as we look on. I would remind myself more often to expect magic, were it not for the delirious pleasure of coming upon it by chance.
