Nobody ever tells you
Hey, wake up wake up, this
Is the day you become a mage!
The magician school comes for you at noon!
It’s not like Harry Potter
No Hagrid no professors who turn into cats,
no owls…
…well, not many
And they don’t carry mail.
Just messages that turn your head at dusk
The vague shadow of another world
Beckoning in the side mirror but
It Reflects nothing
Which is itself a message
So you start hunting in the corners
Lighting candles
and leaving the lights off
Bathing in herbs that begged to be picked last summer and you didn’t know why
One day you find your voice,
Over dishes perhaps,
Or halfway from here to there
With advertisements for wrinkle cream blurring the lines of reality as you navigate traffic
The words pour forth
Or the paint,
Whatever,
And suddenly there you are
Casting spells on I-95
or handing a small packet to your darling but perennially sad co-worker with one word
Drink.
It makes you feel a little like Alice (in wonderland) or
maybe the puppeteer behind wonderland,
did you ever wonder who put all those chess pieces there, anyway?
And now you’re doing it
Contributing to the mystery and absurdity of the world as you go around behind the powers that have been ceded to,
Trying to make magic that will balance the forces of light and darkness.
You find you have no illusions, there is an unseelie court
but fortunately they believe they are doing the right thing, too,
And are easily swayed by cookies
Although they work better if you sing over them while baking,
Calling sunbeams and flecks of hope to sprinkle on top.
And there comes a day finally when you realize
You have only sweatpants, witches clothes, and disguises,
And you don’t want anything else
That you come and go as you please
And that you have developed the habit of making magic everywhere.
You are a little eccentric and the constant
Use of power has rendered your hair untameable And probably grey
But you are indifferent because it suits you perfectly It makes you glow
And at long last you know you are using your power
For good.