Demoted from a weathervane
And stuck atop a ten-foot stick;
Not quite a scarecrow, but resigned
(What choice?) to this demeaning duty;
A kind of painted wooden plane
Or toy reduced to just one trick:
A decoy in reverse. Assigned
To guard the stubbled beauty
Sunflowers die to make from stalks,
He flaps—no, that’s not right. He wheels—
Two useless windmill wings as if
Their backstroke meant he’d like to fly
Back whence he came. Nearby, the walks,
Shellacked in winter glaze that seals
Their stones, demand of us a stiff
Advance we fail to dignify.
And still the fowl above, his hues
Unknown in nature, plays a bird
That’s never still. He points a way;
He points away. His silent hiss—
The sound with which he would refuse
A task so pointless and absurd—
Knifes through the wind as if to say
“I never was cut out for this.”
Len Krisak‘s books include complete translations of Virgil’s Eclogues and Horace’s Odes. With work in The Antioch Review, The Hudson Review, and The Sewanee Review, he is a four-time champion on Jeopardy!
