Poem: Magic

[shiori_makiba]

Poem: Magic

by shiori_makiba

Word Count: 397 words in 75 lines.

Prompted by siliconshaman during the June 2016 Thank Muse It's Friday session.

Feedback is not required but always appreciated.

 

“Magic”

There was a lot of magic in the world.

But sometimes it was difficult to spot.

Maybe it was because it was magic

but people just kind of expect it

to be something impossible

to mistake for anything else.

It's easy to point to the miracle,

and say that's magic.

It's easy to point to

the witch chanting her spells,

and say that's magic.

It's not so easy

when it's the quiet stuff

that works more often than not

quietly in the background.

And when people do spot,

they tend to disregard it as unimportant

or dismiss it as weak.

This is a very foolish thing to do.

Magic, regardless of its shape,

should always be respected.

Because like most things in nature,

if you failed to respect it,

you often failed to survive it.

People were right

when they said

one of the powerful forces

in magic was love.

But they also got it wrong.

Because too many of them

focused too much attention

on one kind of love.

They forgot or ignored that

all love can generate that kind of power,

that kind of magic.

For example,

the love of a friend.

The problem is that

most of the time,

that magic is quiet.

It just helps the friends

support and protect each other

without ever calling attention

to its existence.

Most of the time.

Sometimes it has

to be more obvious.

My village tells the story

of one such friendship.

Of a girl named Amity and

a boy named Constantine

who found themselves

trapped in a cave

while a storm raged outside.

They had nothing

but the clothes on their backs,

each other and their friendship.

Neither had ever cast a spell in their lives

but in that cave with each other's lives in their hands,

they suddenly had enough power to light a fire.

There were other stories.

Like one friend making a shield

that protected the other from all harm.

Or separated by great distance,

one friend hears their friend's voice.

Sometimes to warn of impending danger

but sometimes simply to say 'hello, you are not alone.'

Some, fearing for their friend's life,

appear beside them just in the nick of time.

There were countless tales

of friendship and its magic.

At least as many as there were

other tales of magic.

It simply took a little

more looking to find them.