Something magic
about knowing
it’s the darkest days
that bring on the buds,
the extravagant bloom,
because oh, friend,
how dark it is.
Posts Tagged ‘magic’
Spell of the Christmas Cactus
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged blooming, dark, magic, resilience on December 14, 2023| 10 Comments »
On Christmas Eve
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, friendship, jar, magic, vessel on December 25, 2021| 8 Comments »
On the doorsill,
left without a knock,
was a very small bag
with a big silver bow.
Inside was a jam jar
with a red gingham cap
filled with homemade confetti,
Its thin red label said:
Christmas magic,
just sprinkle.
And it’s that simple:
a bit of bright paper
cut into tiny squares
and the true love of a friend,
and I am awash with magic,
baptized by tears of devotion
and wonder, marvel
and memory, loss
and hope and gratitude.
Let the jars we are
be vessels for love.
May we be certain
that whatever we carry inside us,
we are capable of real magic—
the kind that flings open
the heart of another
and lets wild joy rush in.
The kind that turns words
into wine. The kind
that takes a gray rainy day
stained with grief and sickness
and turns it into
Christmas.
First Lie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Christmas, lie, magic, parenting, poem, poetry, Santa on April 26, 2019| 4 Comments »
inside the lie
was a beautiful truth
that grew a white beard
and a giant belly
and though it preferred
to go barefoot
it stepped into shiny black boots
and moved north—
so far north that no one
could find it—
and buried itself
in snow and surrounded
itself with elves and candy
and increasingly elaborate stories,
stories so lovely that for a while
the lie began to believe itself,
until one day
a girl walked right up to it
and said to it,
Tell me the truth
and the snow melted
and the beard fell out
and the elves turned back
into evergreen trees
and the boots did their best
to erase their tracks,
and the truth stood there
naked and said,
There is so much joy
in giving,
and the girl cried
and cried,
longing for the lie.
I just want there to be real magic,
she said.
And the truth
held out its
beautiful hand
and said,
This, too, is magic.
It was years
before the girl
could listen.
That Almost January Evening When I Was Six
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cinderella, family, magic, new year's eve, parents, poem, poetry on January 29, 2019| 4 Comments »
We sat around the oval kitchen table
and made hats out of ribbons
and paper plates, and we piled them high
with golden grapes and fake flowers.
I remember thinking how great, how magic it was
that something we’d use for dinner
transformed into something so elegant.
Today I stared hard at a paper plate,
as if I could return to that state of delight
and easy grace. Was this how Cinderella felt
when she gazed at the pumpkin the day
after the ball? Wondering if the magic
happened at all? Weighing the shape
of reality against her dream?
Yes, I tell myself, it was real,
the glittering fruit, the beauty I felt,
the laughter around the table.
And it was a dream, the way my parents
made it seem as if we had it all.
And when the clock struck midnight,
none of the magic left at all.
The Next Storm Comes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beginnings, magic, new year, poem, poetry, snow, storm on December 31, 2018| 4 Comments »
And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings.
—Meister Eckhart
And suddenly you know it’s time
to shovel the drive. For though snow
still falls, at this moment it’s only
three inches deep and you can still push it easily
with your two wide yellow shovels.
Yes, it’s time to start something new—
though it doesn’t feel new, this
shoving snow from one place to another.
In fact, your shoulders still feel
the efforts of yesterday.
But with each push of the shovels,
the path on the drive is new again. At least
it’s new for a moment, new until snow
fills it in. Then it’s a different kind of new.
How many beginnings are like this?
They don’t feel like beginnings at all?
Or we miss their newness?
Or they feel new only for a moment
before they’ve lost their freshness?
There is magic in beginnings, says Meister Eckhart,
and sometimes we see beginnings all around us,
a new path, a new promise, a new meal.
A new prayer. New snow fall. A new song.
Is it too grand to call it magic, this new calendar year?
Too grand to call it magic, this momentary
clearing on the drive? Too grand to be magic,
this momentary clearing in my thoughts?
Or is it exactly, perhaps, what magic is—
something we allow ourselves to believe,
despite logic, despite reason, something that brings
us great pleasure, makes us question
what we thought we knew, our sense
of what is possible changed.
My Nine-Year-Old Daughter Reads Emily Dickinson
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, emily dickinson, literature, magic, mother, poem, poetry, reading on June 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »
Mom, she says, I don’t know what it was about that book,
but the pages were falling out and it smelled old
and I think it cast a spell on me.
And I recall the first time I read Emily,
an old cloth book with the text debossed,
how I ran my fingers over the words
and felt them as I read them:
“As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away—”
Mom, she says, I didn’t even understand
a single word I read, but I couldn’t stop reading.
And now, I think that book is haunting me.
We are making her bed just before she sleeps,
and I tug on the covers to straighten them.
Yes, I say, her words are like spells.
I memorized that poem, though I was
too young to know of “courteous
and harrowing grace.” I knew only
that when I said the words, they gave
me such an openness, a wideness, a delight,
as if morning found its way into my chest,
and now, thirty years later, the early light
still touches me, still thralls.
The bed remade, she slips beneath
and I lay at her feet and for a time we read.
I want to talk more about Emily,
but the spell is her own and I don’t
want to trespass her magic,
the wonder she feels.
Perhaps someday she, too,
will read these lines,
“Our Summer made her light escape
into the beautiful.”
and know herself more beautiful
for having let them touch her.
Though I Don’t Really Believe in Fairies, Still …
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, magic, poem, poetry, wonder on July 12, 2014| 2 Comments »
Will it work? says the girl,
when I hand her the magic dust
to sprinkle on the fairy house we’re building
out of sticks and stems and rocks.
Why wouldn’t it work? I say, dropping
more of the tiny red weed seeds
into her open hand. She doesn’t argue with me then,
only keeps her hand extended so I will sprinkle
more magic dust into her palm.
I can tell she doesn’t totally believe me.
I can tell that I wish she did. Oh the sad advent
of being purely practical. I am open
to believing improbable things.
I am tired of math and the same problem
never adding up. I could use a little magic.
I don’t mind if I need to make it up myself.