Leonard Cohen

If a man dies never having described
the magical experience he once had
does it mean the magic never happened

Magic is not the same as conjuring
which is a trick, usually sleight of hand
though a trick of the light may be magical…

“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s where the light gets in”
sang Leonard Cohen with a voice so low it may count as magic

Counting off the things on your bucket list
you may miss the magic
you never thought to list

Thinking about magic you have experienced
you may be in danger of dissecting
it to death and why would you not just accept

Accepting the existence of magic
is a personal prerogative
one person’s magic is another’s commonplace

Magic can happen any place
any time
to anyone

I believe in magic
but not magicians
or ghosts

I defend the rights of others
to believe in ghosts, and
to share what magic means to them

Magic, like love – just is
it cannot be reasoned or conjured up
though you may set the scene for it to manifest

The manifestation of magic
cannot be forced
but only prepared for in receptivity

The reception of magic is easy for children
but what they achieve easily
we struggle to hold onto with age

A life may well be weighed
by the amount of magic
we have observed to be…

Perhaps the real question to be asked
is not whether you believe in magic
but whether magic believes in you…

An image created using Midjourney, of a certain magician…

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1942511719&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, msjadeli in OpenLinkNight, invites us to submit a poem and since we are, in Lisa’s words “just a week away from the spookiness of All Hallow’s Eve”, I have chosen one that references magic and ghosts…

I wrote this in my writing group in the shadow of “Belief in Magic” by Dean Young.

My mind is pot-bound, it’s soil once fertile, exhausted and moss-covered, but in my heyday, I was sought out by women who wanted a sharp wit as well as a handsome body beside them in bed – though I say it myself.
A photographer, I charted my voyages of love, capturing moments from first landfall through exploration and charting to the encirclement of each new island, and then shallowly, I moved on, recording last looks of disappointment.
Island-hopping became a habit, the search for a permanent home for the heart ever elusive till looks went and reputation warded off new discoveries.
I maundered into old age holed up in a rural backwater, photographing literal landscapes instead of those glorious, metaphorical islands of love. My days are nearly done and I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, with the photographs there and the moss…

Over at dVerse Poets Pub, kim881 in Prosery challenges us to write a story with a beginning, middle and end in exactly 144 words using two lines from the Leonard Cohen poem Take This Waltz “And I’ll bury my soul in a scrapbook, – with the photographs there and the moss.”

How would you know…

Does Magic Believe in Us?

Moss