Monday, 2 May 2022

He Shuffles in His Wizard’s Hat

 He Shuffles in His Wizard’s Hat

 

I expect his slippers are just visible

beneath a maroon cloak, festooned

with stars and half-moons, those ones

drawn ever-so-quickly like he was taught

when small, how to scrawl five points

and he never even has to lift his pen.

Then again, he might use ‘Spirograph’,

‘Etcha Sketch’, something even further past.

Just visible, picture it; the purple cloak

and poking out in cones, like steam irons,

soft slipper shuffles. He’s a long beard

scribbled in HB grey or maybe 2B

or not; he could use a bit of white fleck

here or there; crayoned twigs off trees

become very magic wands to correct

mistakes: he’s good with Tippex.

Drawn pointing telescopes at night,

wobbly lines, rubbings out, paper scores,

smudges and thumb prints, it’s not right,

he’s gone over and over it, but flawed,

the first line didn’t quite meet its maker

and ink all over pockets of his purple robe.

On newsprint, no parchment, no papyrus;

he squints to see, twists lens, adjusts,

then spotted, it sits in badly drawn hands,

squarks and all wizards now commands;

he may have drawn a bloody Harry Potter

for all the sense it makes, have planned

this as a month of slippering Dumbledore.  

In the next frame? His telescope put away

back in its box, smiling enthroned he’s sat,

right in closing this and closing that,

because he shuffles in his Wizard’s hat.



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