Poem: "The Wizard Who Did Windows"
This poem came out of the November 1, 2011 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by ellenmillion and sponsored by janetmiles. It's a sequel to the first poem in the Practical Magics series, "Wipeout."
The Wizard Who Did Windows
Jenina detested doing windows.
As a little girl, it had been her job
to clean and re-grease all the oilskins
stretched across the windows of their cottage.
After making a name for herself with diaper charms,
she bought herself a library and a castle and
built the Brown Tower of Practical Magics,
filled with cut crystal windows to let in all the light.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time,
but Jenina quickly discovered that crystal windows
collected cobwebs and dust and bird droppings
and thus needed constant scrubbing.
At first she considered inventing a spell
to clean windows, but she'd have to make
one for each kind of window, which would be
a tedious task to accomplish.
Instead, Jenina invented a spell to create
a Transparent Wall Window anywhere,
which worked just as well on a wooden cottage
as it did on a fancy stone castle.
She hired a bunch of little boys
to make up cute rhymes about the new spell
and sing them on street corners,
in exchange for sweets.
Transparent Wall Window's a marvelous thing!
You put it up once; you can see everything.
It never needs cleaning, or other such care.
Transparent Wall Window -- it works everywhere!
Jenina made quite a bit of money from
people who wanted windows but didn't have any
and from people who had windows
but didn't want to keep cleaning them.
Then a few people put them up without thinking
and one enterprising fellow did so quite deliberately,
and the other wizards discovered that sometimes
the windows broadcast their images into scrying spells.
So Jenina had to call together her troop of boys
and ply them with toffees and pocket pies
to come up with a hasty addition
to the advertisement for her spell.
Transparent Wall Windows will work in both ways,
From inside and outside to bypassing gaze.
Don't put them in bedrooms whatever you do
Or else you will give the whole world quite a view!