The manifester followed by reflection

A man bought

The old house at the crossroad.

You know the one I mean?

It used to be a tavern.

He built a hutch and got some chickens.

One night he left the door of the hutch open

And all the chickens

Were killed by an animal.

There is more to tell.

This man had time.

This man had tools.

This man had resources.

He had a dream

Of fixing up the premises

And resurrecting the tavern

Room by room.

This man was a jazzman.

He would get up in the morning

And look around and get all excited

About his project.

He had some magic in him.

The house also had a dream for itself,

The same dream as the man.

I am not saying that the house was alive.

Not Like a tree or a man -

In fact when the man bought it

It was just a shell of a house,

But as soon as the house saw that the man was serious.

It came to life through the man.

The man was a manifester.

He manifested wiring and walls

He manifested boxes of light.

He manifested strings of lights

That he festooned around the spaces he created.

He brought in two pianos

And a red drum kit.

He refurbished the doors.

He dusted off the long mirror

Behind the bar.

Soon the largest room was finished

Stripped down to the original rafters.

He installed mirrors and invited people

To listen to him jam with his friends.

The house expanded like a flowering bud.

People could see themselves in mirrors.

They could sit in comfortable chairs.

The rooms seemed to know how to welcome strangers.

The man, this manifester, was full of himself.

He was full of dreams.

He wanted the living room to have stucco walls

With strange figures and faces in relief.

Soon the house began to look fantastical.

He embedded wine bottles in masonry.

He swirled plaster on the ceilings.

He would get up in the morning and scat sing

As he made his coffee.

He was genuinely happy

(Said a man who rented the only finished room upstairs).

The man had a cat named Soul.

Soul was a jazzcat.

Soul loved living in a magical house

That was morphing into a tavern.

When the manifester was jamming

In the room of festooned lights and boxes of lights and mirrors

Soul stretched out importantly right in from of the band

And closed his eyes.

Soul's job was to keep the mice out

At that he was very good (but not perfect).
........................
As usual, this poem is based on a real person and a real place. But I wanted to protect the privacy of this person. Even though what he is doing is wonderful and a gift to his community or communities -- the literal community (his neighbors), the community of other artists and the community of culture enthusiasts -- the way he is going about it, and the poem's description of how he is prone to letting other aspects of his living situation slide or fail (the chickens) could be interpreted as a a criticism, even though I do not mean it as such. By calling him a "manisfester" I am paying him the highest of complements (by my dictionary). I looked up google's definition of manisfester and got "someone who manifests". Then google's definition of "powerful manifestor" caught my attention. A powerful manifestor (with an "o") "wants to keep their thoughts on a higher vibration because a positive mind begets a positive life. A simple yet powerful gratitude practice trains our minds to see the good in all things and search for positive experiences along our path." This is actually closer to how I see the man in the poem. What sets a "powerful manifestor" apart from the mere manifester (who would be the artist in the studio or the composer of occasional songs or the good cook (VS, say, the inspired chef) is how their works are birthed from a generative "higher vibration" attitude that alchemizes or transmutes their output as if there is magic involved. These powerful manifestors never second-guess themselves. Have you ever met one? It isn't too hard to find high-profile examples, like Oprah or Elon Musk, but there are also low-profile examples. And I am guessing there are more of them than we might think. The reason they are hard to find is, they can also be self-sufficient and, more likely than not, they are are not self-promoters and might even shun attention.