Monday, October 10, 2011

The Scarecrow

The scarecrow emerges tatterdemalion from dreams
Mommet in Somerset and Berkshire's hodmedod
He's known as tattie bogal in the Isle of Skye
Scotland's old man of the rocks--bodach rocqais

Kuebiko protrudes from the oldest book in Japan
Knows everything about the world yet cannot walk
Wurzel Gummidge adorned with black plumage
Casts a long shadow with a panache of chard

Feathertop of old Salem whom the witch cast into life
Days grew short when he saw in his soul a sinister intent
The bogeyman from the top of the clock, the dawn of time
The moggy, the rook-scarer, the guy, the Bogle himself

In Highsmith a man hid his neighbor's corpse in a scarecrow
It stood up until trick-or-treaters came to burn him down
The inanimate made uncanny by an all-seeing eye
All the crows know where you go and tell the Bogle so

In Dymchurch on Romney Marsh the Flaycrow rides
Backwards through the high street his blindfold steed
Couples disappear into hay bales behind the barn dance
Scarecrows stuck between the bonfire and a powdery moon

Jack-o-lanterns float slow down the creek, candlelight nightclub
Little jittery bats follow tight on the black water
Skeletal wreaths suspended 'mid trees, the spiders' wet webs
Some wind stirs the cornfield a burlap head nods and knows all








10 October 2011









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