We have an annual "Scarecrow Festival" in my home town. All very twee and touristy. A poetry competition (scarecrow theme) is part of the deal and last year I entered. Didn't win. I still like my poem, though.
Sympathy for the Scarecrow
For more than two millennia
o’er the cornfields of mankind,
watched a drab and lonely guardian –
to his fate, damply resigned.
Midst ancient Grecian crops he stood,
half-deity, half-joke;
in Old Japan, omniscient,
for all he couldn’t walk.
Through Rome he passed to Europe
and thence to England’s shore,
where by many names, he kept the grains
safe from the songbird’s craw.
Thus, in Somerset the mommet
startled starlings from the field;
while the mawkin sent the woodpigeon
back to the Sussex weald;
Gallybagger on the Isle of Wight,
and Berkshire’s hodmedod,
urged the linnet and the jackdaw
to avoid the new-sown sod.
On Scottish crofts, bodach rocais
‘the old man of the rooks’,
with tattie bogle stood against
those black and clever crooks.
A strange, unlovely sentinel;
this Guy of twine and straw,
having sought a brain in Oz, in vain,
can’t tell us what he saw,
in all those fields through all those years
as harvests came and went;
the hopes and fears, the famished tears,
the laughter and content.
We’ve made of him a grotesque,
teamed with witches and the dead;
and it somehow seems scant gratitude
to one who kept us fed.
4
Enjoy being online again!
Welcome to the community of good people who base their values on evidence and appreciate civil discourse - the social network you will enjoy.Create your free account
5 comments
Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.Love the first and third. The second has way too many English name references, for me, to make much sense. Skipping the second, I had a very nice picture of the topic and related to the end.
TomKat9111
Level 3
May 20, 2018
0
@Faithless1 I totally understand your intent.
I could while away the hours conferrin' with the flowers consulting with the rain....(whistle or fife) and the thoughts I'd be thinkin' I could be another Lincoln if I only had a brain
GreenAtheist
Level 8
May 20, 2018
0
Recent Visitors 17
rcandlish
UK
LetzGetReal
LookingOut AZ.,
Faithless1
Australia
SimonCyrene
UK
TomKat9111
Jefferson City,
Photos 45 More
Posted by EntheogenFanI wrote this about a crazy girl who I loved like crazy. She made my entire life feel like insanity.
Posted by AllamandaNot in the current meaning of 'dog-whistle' but I think people will like this poem.
Posted by TO_BYEntangled Particles
Posted by TO_BYGraphis (Graphic Poem)
Posted by TO_BYGraphis (graphic poem)
Posted by neutralite[youtu.be] today... was a day. ✂️ Squeak in the music room on this site, that's what to do.
Posted by RemiforceDEATH IS SO FINAL--Youth La Boheme days in our small boyhood town, drinking cheap wine, smoking grass all night in some artist's studio, staggering forth into the bleary translucent twilight dawn.
Posted by RemiforceWHEN MY BROTHER LEFT FOR NAM--We looked across the field of death & maiming, in our youthful half knowing, the war raging in the media suddenly close & personal,like a car crash We drank to ...
Posted by RemiforceMY AGE IS IMPATIENT.
Posted by BohoHeathenThis is just a poem of past experiences.
Posted by PetterAbstinence indeed!
Posted by AstralSmokeWanting Wanting to be broken utterly split apart with a mighty tearing like an apple broken to unfold the delicate open veined petal pattern inside the fruit .
Posted by MiizzunderstoodWE WILL BE HOME SOON MOM.
Posted by Stargazer13And this is what you mean to me… That I see beauty and feel lovely in a dark, broken and rusted world Because you love me, I’ve been brave And opened into full bloom beneath the gaze of ...
Posted by Stargazer13Dog days are over Picking every four leaf clover Gonna break out of every box they put me in This soul is hungry and divine sugar my sin Personal evolution Fated love the revolution Raw ...
Posted by Stargazer13I've heard the stories of your empty world Devoid of soft touches And the rare souls that cross lifetimes, to see again through eyes captured in silent and consummate knowing I've listened to ...