• Strolling into a run down Movie Theater,
    Without a screen,
    I see
    Black and white penguins
    Holding little peculiar gadgets of all shapes and sizes.
    Wooden ones, and ones of tin.

    They wobble in like flies attracted to honey,
    Spread to their overly rehearsed seats
    And sit so fastidious, and anxious,
    For all but one seat is occupied
    All but,
    The chair nearest to the front

    I smile as the young little penguins boggle at the absent.
    Nervousness wavers in the air
    Where is that one person?
    Then suddenly, emerging over at the side,
    He comes. The group stands,
    And sit right back down again.

    I could see them stiffen as
    Another person wearing black and black
    Come, and again they all stand.
    But this time,
    She holds a stick:
    A small black twig with a white tip.

    She twirls it into place
    Pinches with the gossamer touch
    Between two fingers,
    Waves it like a magic wand,
    And magic begins.
    Emerging, like a picture and all silence stops.

    And in that exact moment,
    I saw flames, blizzards, and lightning.
    I felt the earth shaking
    The wolves howled
    The bears growled
    The winds were hurricanes.

    The Gods argued
    The seasons passed
    Time traveled between years
    Rachmaninoff, Prokoffief, Beethoven, Bach
    Rose from the dead,
    And danced upon the stage.

    I was holding onto my seat, breath-taken
    In that instantaneous sweep
    And with another cue of the magic wand
    Suddenly,
    Everything,
    Disappeared, as nothing ever happened.

    And all those young penguins stood,
    Lined up behind the magician-
    They too were breath taken by their first practice
    They walked into an endless fate
    Where time rides on the waves of a circle,
    And a place where age doesn’t exist.

    As I walked out, I found this most intruding
    I discovered something as I stared at the domed theater
    To keep this diamond ritual
    To be a teacher of rituals
    And so I did, as I still do, as the petite penguins did,
    As a part of, the magical orchestra.