Majih-Kwand

what would you cast into existence?

When my four-year-old says it slow,
you can hear the misplaced consonant,
the "K" at the beginning of the second word:
Majih-Kwand.

These kids have been captured by the idea. "I wish I had a magic wand that gave me all the powers in the whole world," says my six-year-old.

    Wow, I say,
                         me too.
    What would you do first?

She thinks. 
"I would become a unicorn."

    Sounds fun, I say. 

She never asks 

    What would you do with yours?

(I really want you to pause here,
answer the question for yourself,
draft a comment with that answer,
come back, read mine,
then edit and post yours.)

Chopsticks are a popular magic wand in this house, to the point that all but these three have been lost

Tree Power.
I've had this vision,
this longing
for a World Tree,
a single tree so vast
it rights the seasons,
protects us,
keeps us safe.

I'd make a billion of them.

Pull a Totoro,
incanting, dancing
big, rowdy trees from the earth
anyplace that needs shade and food.

tree by tree
I'd regrow the ancient forests
asphalt, concrete, endless
monocrop grass corn soy
all rototilled back to topsoil 
    by new churning roots
thrilled back to polyphony
    by new branching mycelia.

Superconductor Power.
A wave, a tap,
and we'd know the secret,
the material
for not just room-temp
but jungle-temp superconductors.
More waves
more taps
and new zero-loss electrical webs
intercontinental maglev rail
branch like hyphae
across half the earth.

Tokamak Power.
Like dial-up to gigabit,
new fusion power plants
would flood this web
with so much energy
we wouldn't know what to do with it.
    Desalination.
    Hydrogen fuel cells.
    Just to start.
And no need to constrain
to current-but-scaled-up tech;
no need to top-out at
boring-ass heavy hydrogen.
We're making helium
    (sky cities; dirigibles)
we're making lithium
    (from raw, abundant hydrogen)
And heck, why stop there.
You can set these tokamaks
to conjure any element
forged in the heart of the largest stars,
the whole periodic table
up to iron.

Fusing small atoms into big ones is a good way to make energy, unless the big atom is bigger than iron. Periodic table from mellamojulio, used with purchase & permission. More accurate “where the elements come from” cosmic periodic table on Wikimedia Commons.

Leaf Power.
This world of
ceramic and metal
superconductor and tokamak
high-modern cIviLiZaTi0ɴ
is fine and all
but lets go back to the trees.
For all the countries
with contracting populations,
for all the rural areas
returning to nature,
let's give a cozy opt-out
from capitalist high-tech metropolis.
We'll learn old and new ways
to live among forest,
carve round dwellings
in living trunks.
This is fully-provisioned
luxury subsistence,
you can plug your
    phone
    minifridge
    induction hot-plate
    heat pump
    medical device
right into the wall:
phloem to electron conversion,
the leaves make more than enough to share.

Heartbreak Power.
Over black ICE vans
and homesick soldiers 
following orders
genociding neighbors
I wave my wand
and hearts rip apart
horrified at the work of their hands
unable any longer
to muster obedience
to the order
of death
or let their own brokenness
compel them to anything but grief.

Fences, walls, borders collapse
great wailing mass of humanity
safe from each other at last
by this mutually-observed
devestation,

dismantling warheads
    (works of pRøGrⅇsS
    to end all progress
    10,000 times anew),
hammering tanks to plowshares—
why did our ancestors
stockpile horrors?

Neighbor weeps with neighbor,
and all share fruit and shade.