Magic

Sometimes only a poem will do. Just some leaves from a tree, or some shavings of bark, but certainly not the branches, the trunk and all the many twigs in their entirety- together all of these things paint too clear a picture.

Here is the procedure: you sit in an empty room.
You wait, with the clicking of the clock, and its little echo.
The inconsequential presses your shoulders down, forward,
your neck bending too,
until your eyes are staring in your lap
and you feel it, the small cool thread, lifting that perilous thing
out from the crown of your head, pulling it out, like a magician's scarf,
upward toward the heavens.

A sudden halt and your head snaps up.
It is sudden waking from a dream, and the prickly voice,
the one that asks you to stand tall,
the one that asks that you use your voice
and ask for admiring eyes
is gone
all gone.