Microcosmic

"The world is full of magic things patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." The word ‘magic’ can mean several things. A common way in which it’s used is to express the idea of conjuring - pulling the proverbial rabbit out of a hat. Bringing something into existence that didn’t exist before. There’ll be a range of beliefs about this. From it being merely sleight of hand, done for entertainment purposes, to it being, a literal act of creation with the use of special powers. In whichever way it's thought of, ‘magic’ usually conveys ideas of mystery and wonder. What is art? If you write a poem, paint a picture, write a song, you are literally bringing something into the world that wasn’t there before. What’s more this creation may well have ‘special powers’. The ability to strongly affect people, to move them - even change their lives. You are performing a kind of magic. Artists are magicians. But why stop at art? Aren’t we constantly bringing things into the worl...

A barn owl mist. I gave the view out of the window one last look before drawing the curtains on the day. Then.... I'd seen plenty of mist but never like this. A pearly shawl draped over atmosphere. It was as if all the particles in all the gaps  had been painted white. A dream of mist.  Thick enough to hide secrets. To lose memories in. Maybe it had vented up from an underworld of snow's afterlife. It looked barely real -  dry ice pumped onto a stage. but as a herald for what.... Then I saw it. A crack must have opened to let the barn owl in  white side up ghost side down mothborne from another world An owl's vapour Slipped into it, tilted out of it. Became it. An owl made from it.. Fog matadored bird, that created then dissolved back into murk. A dance of back and forth. Just as the owl was a mist owl so the mist was a barn owl mist.   As if there were a cloud - essence of  barn owl swirling over the ground.  So concentrated at its core that it m...

The path Walking along the canal towpath. Like a huge rockfall it falls away - the past shears off. Nothing ever happened. Nothing. And on the other side another landslip. The future. Nothing will happen. Nothing ever could. I suddenly arrive. I arrive here where I am. I'm a spacewalking astronaut, lifeline cut, no umbilical cord to before or after, floating in a starless, timeless void. I don't have any history, no name, I haven't done anything. Walking,, eating, drinking thinking, dreaming, sleeping - none of that. I drag no leaden ball of the past, no slights, hurts, heartbreaks. The slate wiped clean of wrongdoings, boasts, deceits, ill-thought-out misdeeds. That time, first day at secondary school when I wrote 'John Smith' on my exercise book, when all I had to do was write my name, and all the other boys laughed me back into a curled up fetus. Nope, never happened. But neither did those, smiles, laughs, kisses, loves, imagined culinary triumphs, successfully ...