Books by a Poet

The Spellcaster of Oberlin Lane

9/13/23

A man who begs on Main and May, whose beard is yellow, and who plods about like a wraith, makes me believe how brave he has been for living, for he must be seventy years old, and his eyes are faded blue, and his big yellow beard is unforgettable. He smiled at me once, earlier on. Since then, I’ve not heard him talk, and he reminds me it is silly to want to get someone’s attention. That elder gentleman must be a wizard, for he is proof that I’ll never know what he knows, and I must trust that is okay, trust him and how he begs. People have abused the term wizard, but that man doesn’t need to do the kind of magic that is unnatural or unholy, for he demonstrates sober magic. He is proof of Age. However, there is another guy, who, my cat tells me, lives past the faded yellow billboard I see for an old company ‘Charles Manoog Inc.’ That yellow billboard is on the side of a rusty bridge that supports overgrowth. A spellcaster who lives on Oberlin Street is vain. He’s that other guy, says my cat. Vanity is when you think people are always thinking about you and live a life like that is the case, like an artist predicting their fame. Ms. Jane Austen (b. 1775) famously puts it, “Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us” in her second novel, Pride and Prejudice (pub. 1813); she liked to write for her family, so I’ve read.

Anyhow, by his own account, heard through the meowing of my dear Spyridon, the Spellcaster of Oberlin Lane could speak to the rain, was cousins with shades, and spent countless eons with the cobwebs in the corner of his windowsill wearing a starry, tartan robe, mouthing whispers to the spiders. He forgot his own name. He named the spiders all Ben. Whenever asked to identify himself, the spellcaster referred to a clan in the highlands,

“My family was part of the famed MacDonald clan in Inverness who had 38 members killed by the Scottish Army during the Glencoe Massacre.” 

That massacre was in 1692, still part of the lore of Scottish heather. 

To pass the time, The Spellcaster of Oberlin collects video tapes and movies. His favorite is the Drunken Master (rel. 1978) starring Jackie Chan (b. 1954).

On Tuesdays, the spellcaster liked to go outside to walk his fat, white, bulldog Jelly. 

He probably never even noticed the man with the bushy beard who begs on Main and May.

Since he learned telepathy, The Spellcaster of Oberlin Lane could tell that while one man was scurrying out of his job at the sober house and down the slope the man was wishing for the rain to stop. 

‘Could it not rain?’ 

There was another man in a remote building on hold with the social-security office for forty minutes. 

The spellcaster thought this was a funny thing for a man to do, scurry in the rain, or be on a phone. He noticed them as he was watching like a hawk. ‘That other man,’ thought the vain guy, ‘thinks the rain should stop because of him.’ How vain that man must have been. WE were all being a little vain I guess, except for my role model with the bushy yellow beard. Besides, the spellcaster’s focus was aslant, like a spotlight in the middle of a bore. 

A rain dance occurred. The spellcaster was going to curse the man complaining of rain. As an effect of the curse, that night, when he went home his shoes would stink!

 His brown leather shoes would stink so bad that if he had a dog it would jump out the window! 

That’s what he’d get from shunning the Spellcaster of Oberlin Lane’s rain! 

Due to the spellcaster’s curse, the dog would leap right out of the civilized world into nature and go live feral. 

As the Spellcaster of Oberlin Lane conjured a curse, in his mind, a tube of air, about 50 feet long, came out of the ground. It flew below the trees, over the roofs of cars. When the tube came closer to the spellcaster’s eyes, the eyes saw it was actually a vein dripping blood. The spellcaster wrestled with it to try and fold it into a telescope so he could spot Mercury. The blood it dripped as it flew over the cement splashed on the asphalt and spread with the rainwater. 

The spellcaster raised his hands to shade himself from the assault.

He couldn’t twist it into a telescope! 

His dog Jelly went woof, woof, woof!

The man, my friend with the beard, stood calmly with his sign beside a tree.

Then the vein flew back to the ground under a yard on Kilby Street. 

The spellcaster thanked the stranger who never spotted him trying to curse.

He refrained from cursing him, and vowed to no longer be so vein as to cast curses. 

Next, while walking back to Oberlin Street, the spellcaster saw a bee flying in the air, and to think this man thought his spells were as translucent as beeswax. Like the departing of his faux magic for true religion was on everyone’s mind. As if! The next year he cut his hair, bought a new robe, evolved. He stopped thinking his spells were so phat, meowed my cat. His spells were done on paperwork that was a nuisance but put his affairs in order on tiny yellow notepads. He got a job walking dogs. The other day there were flash floods in Leominster, and he had nothing to do with that rain so he told a young child kindly by saying nothing at all. 

His demise got rid of singular magic, but when he was grounded and less vengeful, the area became balanced.

They coo and gaga and whine like infants at the bus stop under close examination, beautiful old friends who cannot be judged by logic.

I thanks you, methinks.