God’s Scarecrow

The people stood by and watched;
The rulers, meanwhile, sneered at him
~ Luke 23:35

Husk and shell of yourself, and yourself only nothing
But so much stuffing and stuck-on second and third-
Hand clothing: as often as not only mock-goodwill
Offerings given by us, almost more in our loathing
Of those than in any loving of others; this, our giving,
Ever leaves us more space for all the latest fashions
That, as leaves, never last us past the present season,
So in this giving we receive (else we deceive ourselves).

*

We say ‘bless us’ when we dress the worst-distressed
In our best worsted as preferable to leaving it for moths,
We for whom finest wool, fur, tweed and cashmere is mere
Cash growing fast as weeds on our ever-green money trees.
In this way we say we lay up treasure surer than all the trash
Of this perishable world, begin crediting ourselves with living
Out our creed in being greedy, begging no pardon if our back-
Handed offer offends God’s best friend-in-need, the beggar.

*

Every bird that sees (and sees through) you is a mockingbird;
Every brave raven (evil things, if bird or devil) calls you craven,
Says you’re too weak to beat back the beak of wren or finch,
Flinch at any winged thing not an inch bigger than a finger;
Cries of magpies, grackles and crows perched above your brow
So many cackles and caws to cause you pain (like that man of Uz
More mocked than any of us, but one) if only you had a brain as in Oz…
Waste of space, birds mock you to your face as forage for ass, horse or ox,
Tell you, who are calm as a lamb, to come to your last straw, lift yourself up
From your nails and come down from the stilt where you list as a ship
And scare us straight till we’re silent; do, or else you’ll listen to us crow
Over you till you croak and we’ll fill every ear of corn with our scorn.
In insolence and violence maybe we misinterpret silence, adding insult
To assault as salt in your wounds, inquiring in our iniquity like fools:
If He who made the ear can hear why doesn’t He close our mouths?
If He clothes the field’s flowers why do you wear what’s eaten by moths?
If He cares for all crows and sparrows why not also all scarecrows?
If He’s your shield, should he not spare your ears our spears and arrows?
We revel in rebelling, repel you as a leper, and still we hold the field.

*

Homeless and lonely as any of the forsaken to whom kindness
Is seldom taken for granted (yet often in gratefulness), you hang
Alone in a field with none of the feeling of living things living along
With their own, alone as evil men believe God is on His throne.
Amid so much solitude and soil, rich or poor, you’re not worth
The dirt beneath well-heeled heels, nor a second look except
It’s to look away from your face, not a second thought except
It’s to think you’re beneath notice and a waste of brain space.
Formed from God’s cast-off ends and odds, the very buzzards
That feast on crops and corpse would send you off to Oz or Uz
To tend to them as best you can and not bother us- but buzz off
As the bees holy men of old hold up to us as the way we should be.

*

Birds of prey (a legion of winged things more demon than haloed angel)
Whose domain is between clod and cloud would, in bad faith, pray you
Go away if pray they could; since coarse curs and sinners can only curse
They take that course, call you hay-brained and common man-of-straw
Whose very parts are varied warts, virtues vices, meekness weakness,
A shepherd given to sheepishness; some very proper prop to be knocked
Down a notch, not more capable of being fully human than any corpse,
Angel or alien (of either sort); and these scavengers are the avengers
Self-appointed to do it, for you, they say, can’t scare a timorous mouse
Or titmouse from your acres (or any sacred area- though wherever
You are our very air carries an aura of awe) and are an easy target.

*

Sower and harvester of Earth’s lower hearts into high Heaven,
You’re both the grower and the growth; even so, every rook
Looks with crooked head down its beak at you as if in anger
As an ill-clad stranger stuffed with nothing, but all puffed-up
For all that, an enemy to their peace even though you stay
As silent as the grave; well, if you do say anything, it may be
By way of silent display, teaching without preaching each of us
With the brain to know how to be patient under pain and scoffing;
To take no more offense than does a fence at those who’re more
Senseless than any sole post or pole, or a whole forest of so many,
Who’ll knock it down with the soles of their feet; all without caring
One wit (who haven’t one in either soul or intellect) what they’ll find
Or else lose, having no mind to know what it was set up to prevent.

*

You reign in a well-tilled, rain-fed field filled with corn,
Wheat and whatnot grain (in and from which flowers
And overflows our cornucopia, simple symbol and sacrament
Of a Thanksgiving season more plentiful than any in Utopia);
You watch every raven ravenously and enviously devour hour
By hour your kingdom but (they say), being craven, haven’t courage
Or cantankerous enough to rave, rage and rant, can only go on
Canting about being a dove above those sow-appetites so low,
Peacock-prides so high, spider-weavings so deceiving, snake-
Sneakings so slithering; our divinely-diving kingfisher who all lizards,
Alligators and salamanders slander as crow-crowned as with thorns,
A kind of king of grains in rags, patched, darned and (cross) stitched
(Lines like if hit with switches) but torn to within an inch of skin,
Looking every bit a witch with your withered and witless aspect,
A cone-shaped hat showing you at once a dunce and Merry Andrew
Who drew a band and laughter after you like a clown, with a rent
In every garment you live in like a tenement and don’t even own…

*

All these ravens, not knowing you from Adam, call you a graven image,
Think you a burlap sack packed with stuffing and nonsense worthy
Of a burlesque, a made-up mannequin in hand-me-down fashions…
And some in their hand-me-down beliefs value you at a handsome
Thirty pieces, others nakedly hating you as a thrifty thief of life, pricing
You, a prince of peace, Son of a Sire, not as an heir and no higher than
Their servant-for-hire (their error today will be their sorrow tomorrow;
Though take hope knowing some who come to mock may stay to pray,
Who libel and label you a cowardly liar not lion will find you in their lives).

*

They’ll tell you to talk to the stalks (if you want ears that hear
And can’t stalk off when weary as we are who have itching ears
Only for teachers who will learn how to bow down low before our
Self-styled knowledge of the hour), to come down from your tree
Unless you’d be like Simeon Stylites on a ledge (still that trite rite,
Like your fall attire, has fallen all out of style); they’ll scoff, scold,
Scorn you as a king of corn whose crown resembles a cornucopia
Upside-down (like Simon Peter on his own tree) or a horn unblown,
Silent until the trumpet’s sudden sounding at The Second Coming.

*

They’ll scowl, howl and hoot you down, inquire (quite as owls)
Who you, a ragged clown, think you are to monitor any fowl-
Fouled field till it’s ripe for reaping and stare at us as if at tares:
As if we’d be those weeds the reaper tears up when you reappear.
The same say you’re dead and have a heart and head filled with hay;
They call you every mean name in the book but if they looked it up
They’d know hay means living in the one book they never took up
(Or if ever by chance taken up, only for the sake of putting down);
Call your story as checkered as your shirt who’ve never crosschecked it,
In-mostly-motley fools decked out in the checked-out fashions of the day.

*

Mistaking your meekness for weakness (so the weak always do,
Bat-blind birds who’ll inherit not the land but inhabit the whirlwind,
Those scared of the sacred who’ll be scattered as birds at a clap),
These birdbrains say you sway this way and that, quail at every quail,
Shake at every bat as if it’s out of Hell, and at shadow of every black-
As-a-spade crow, fearing each shape and shade as if it’s of Hades.
Blessed are you no less because they speak of you every evil, vile lie,
Fools who don’t know how you, the one true Son and Zion’s scion,
Have overthrown hated Sin, its sister Death and Hell itself, and so sit
(Who no soul, however soiled and ill, foul and full of free will, can resist
If you will to rain over it from Heaven- so Grace, while the brightest
And whitest of rays, even has its grays) now upon your love-won throne…

*

Since Death was defeated Life’s not her throne, nor the hornet-
Sting-crown worn by Sin, it now being thrown down and never
Again as a coronet there to sit, as the Apostle says in his Epistle
To the Corinthians: Death and Sin that made mocking moccasin-
Entrance in Eden Garden now each a corpse in need of a coroner:
Though I’d thought all ought to have known by now that the cause
Of their death is your own, as love proves to sense with testimony
Far better than even the evidence of many centuries has shown.
(Blown down in a northeaster, you’re lifted-up on Easter’s throne,
Once eclipsed and adrift, now our fixed true north and master star
Satellite-intellects throng into constellations to tell of in angelic song.
Each sun is a sign and sings quieter than a sigh to the One on-high,
Lamps singing their psalms in unison to the only Son of God, praising
Without words the glory of their Lord, ‘shining with joy for their maker’).

*

Fools think you’re darned if you do come down and darned
If you don’t and so caught in a catch-22; let them be warned,
Who don’t know how some same number psalm of tribulation
Is one of triumph over our trouble, that the world and all its whirl
Is calm in the palm of your hand; and in then refusing your own crown
You’ve now won the palm of renown, and so soon all shall bow down
Low before you and stand naked before a lamp bright as a noon sun;
And you, who were such a scandal, shall move through all the arches,
Rooms and holes of our Sheol-foul souls as you search us with candles.

*

Among some of us (let’s wish it was more) you’re welcome enough
This yearning time of year, appearing in some homes, yards, parks
And gardens, even of those whose hearts are hardened as stones,
A grateful greeting to the season, one in preparation and prophetic
Of some greater to come: now each scarecrow as all homeless we see
Is a mere prophecy of what we don’t (but still profess a hope to) and so
In justice and love must bring home to us till we come to Thanksgiving.

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