The Prestige

This poem comes after watching one of my favorite movies, The Prestige.

Everything is magic and it all works
by those rules known by every heart:

The first is the Magician's presentation
of something ordinary and Pledge that it
will not surprise us anymore than usual.
It could be a dull coin dragged from one
of your pockets, a lovely assistant who
we've all been watching anyway; doves
are not uncommon, but anything will do:
so far you are probably underwhelmed.

Then there's the Turn where what we knew
is taken away with the Magician waving
his hands before our faces in empty air.
To stop here would not be magic, but only
flashy robbery, which makes up so much
of our lives: lives full of things taken, stolen,
leaving.  It might definitely be called a trick,
but hardly magic.
    
                           The Turn is when time
slows as the glass vase falls, when the
heart sinks as we bury our dead heroes,
when we know her eyes have turned and
her footsteps fade off in the distance, just
as they begin to swell in our memory.
The sun must always set and over time
each and every moment will vanish ...

Here we realize that even the smallest
coin would buy something and the world
is quieter without the dove cooing—so the
audience holds its applause and its breath.

We all know we need the return, the Prestige,
the resurrection.  We need to know that love
has not been sawed in half yet again, nor has
it been lost to thin air.

                                       So now the Magician
brings back what we once called ordinary, but
now with something extra.  We count the hearts
or spades, flip it over, and find joy that what we
hold is very much ours and it always has been.
Everything that was volunteered was returned—
the only difference is, this time we're grateful.

We're surrounded by magic and know its comings
and its goings. So please look around, see the Pledges
made to you in this moment, and know that, even now,
they are making the Turn, like all those other late-loved
things which took your breath in passing and left that
twinge in your chest.  I've told you what comes next,
so, for now, what you must do is just wait ...