THE MAGICIAN’S BIRTHDAY

Once in four years comes his birthday
The white bearded magician’s birthday
He has thrown that big old party
We have been invited

Stories and memories of innocence
That lay buried in snowy mountains
We have kept locked in our senses
They will be unlocked in his presence

I board a homebound train
To a place that’s been long lost
It’s speeding to that old station
Where magic will come alive
These mountain paths haven’t changed
They’ll still lead me back home
As I land on a deserted platform
Someone comes out of the fog

There stands the magician
With his old hat and gown
It’s hard to tell if he’s waving at me
Or his hands trembling with the years
But still he dons that magical smile
That filled our hearts with laughter
And the spell of wonder he cast
That’ been lost with the years

Back in the hills by the fireside
The smell of the grass sends me to a trance
I hear a few familiar footsteps
Yeah it’s Jimmy and Janice

As all the others join in
We all sit around the bonfire
It’s time again for the magical stories
With apple wine and round pan cakes

Those memories are now so vivid
When there was magic in the rain
Snowfalls across the valley
Spellbinding our hearts like the hills
Now in our minds we’ve become stronger
Yet something had changed in our hearts
Tonight I feel it surrounding us again
We’d lost the laughter in our hearts

How we forgot to stare
At the cotton balls and the blue umbrella
That’s getting thinner and thinner
Through the skyscrapers tall
How our hearts were filled with sadness
The day innocence was abandoned
How we lost the eyes that saw the magic
In being alive in this world

The years have shaken his steady hard gaze
That fixed us with a magical spell
We see the same yearning in his eyes
For the innocence we had forsaken
That turned the clouds into cotton balls
And the sky to a blue umbrella

How we used to stare at the calendars
Looking for his birthday every year
Thought he used to vanish it with his hands
Oh what a magical birthday it used to be
But he can see that yearning in our eyes
For the magic he spread in our lives ?

As he lay in his arm chair
He called us all to his side
Then he whispered something in our ears
It passed into our souls forever

Who can forget the smile
That spread on his face as he looked at us
It just set our hearts free again
To look at the child within
Who can forget the words
He spoke again and again as he looked at us
He spoke thus as he set our hearts
Free to be true again

“We all come from a world
That’s so much filled with magic
That has filled us with this spirit
Bringing us alive in this world
And isn’t it so strange how
I knew this from so long
I’ll be surrounded by your innocence
As I close my eyes with a smile”