HANDBOOK

scarecrow: ralph murre

Handbook
by Susan Elbe

Go out into the corn's green arms.
Let its silk slip
. . . . . . through your fingers.

You won't need it.
This is rougher work.

Stand there among the dark wings,
in the middle of their chaos,
. . . . . . . . . . . . yawp and thievery.

Find the blueprint in a blackbird's eye:
. . . . . . your own pupil-startled eyes
. . . . . . . . . . . .reflecting back at you,
. . . . . . your summer-frizzled hair,
. . . . . . your limbs limp from lifting
. . . . . . . . . . . the world's heavy bales.

Scavenge—cloth, mud, denim, chaff.
. . . . . . For this task,
. . . . . . . . . . . . soft silhouettes work best.

Give it wildness and bewilderment.
Lend it terror with a heart stuffed full
. . . . . . . . . . . . .of threshed hopes.

Kiss a mouth on with your own
. . . . . . jam-smeared, crooked mouth

Give in when bargaining begins, this existence
. . . . . . . . . . . . moving fire to fire,
straw to tinder, sleeve to kindle,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . memory to miracle.

You're the noon betrayer.
. . . . . . . . . .Understand
you will be monstrous to those
. . . . . . . . . . . . .whose quarrel you reject.

Come back when the wind turns red
and the moon is just a whisper.

Climb the shaky ladder. Lift the hand-hewn,
. . . . . .time-slacked soul above
. . . . . . . . . . . the cracked earth,
hung as if you pinned it to the star-pricked sky.

You will want no down-on-bended-knee,
no set jaw, no tears or finger-pointing.

Prepare to be lonely.

You're the made-in image.
In this field, you're the god.


~ first published in Goodreads