Lost Magic


Beatrice Smooth erased her air,

facing down mystery with her stare.

She minced the meat, stalked the care

and drove the attic off the wall,

all of which is to say,

Beatrice Smooth could not elicit one small

thread of any wit, any dread, that means anything

but more of this, less of these.

No magic in that.


Beatrice grieved her sad fate,

went looking for her soul in the deep wood,

sat on the roots of a tree, howled at the moon,

and just before she dozed off each night,

thought she heard it howling back

like the mystery of the tall white loon.


Then she went to sleep,

where she could not move to the sound,

could not play the tune in her own nightgown

or sweat brawny sweat, pouring

from her sweet brown like honey.

She thought she deserved to die.

Paid her price, made her noise

and now it was time to go.


What Beatrice did not know

was dropping from that eye in the deep black belly of Nyx,

till she awoke at dawn trying to turn fetal

and growl one more loud, “Let me sleep, damn it” tone.

But dancing on her forehead, between the eye and the heart

was the majesty of being just alive, just here.


So, while Beatrice slept Grace danced,

until Beatrice made her real.

Woke to the soul of her own foot, the sound of her own voice,

humming with the moon, singing the round tide

and the secrets of dew.


Beatrice awoke, walked out of the wood

and left the place of silent song

beneath the tree whose roots now seat you.


Beatrice Smooth is a most powerful magician.



Magic may not be attained, it may not be smoothed out, wrought, gained, grown, obtained, earned, gotten, or otherwise assumed by the power of a particular identity. It is this fact which explains its loss. Our rational attainment of all things has led us to believe that the secret of The Secret is a kind of magic.  If only we are constantly happy and grateful, screwing our thoughts around one end of the duality of happiness vs. suffering, then we will finally have that long-awaited dream of immense wealth.  We’ll finally be famous, a movie star, an extremely wealthy CEO or the like.  No longer will we be the plain old average, old ordinary “me.”  We have finally been able to reduce the unfathomable urgings of this soulful life down to a few sound bites about methodology.  But all of these “methods” are but bargains with a Universe that has no need of our puny little bargains.  Nor does it need us to be wealthy beyond measure to know the abundance of the raw essence of life.

We do not get magic.  It gets us.  And when we get that, we are truly most powerful magicians.

© 2009-2014 Andrea Mathews

Magic is not an object we can own.

Magic is not an object we can own.