Scarecrow’s Dream

Extent by Mark A. Harrison

Thinking of dusty roads and summer fields on this unexpected summer day in April.

Scarecrow’s Dream / Burnt Sienna

lost in the sunset apparition
a sleek grey bullet like a scar
that never quite healed, he
is looking for the one who will
fill the hollow in his chest
that once was stuffed with straw

now strewn about him, fragments
of a life long forgotten, of a
new field in spring, wet dirt,
runnels of mud and dead grass
the smell of it still lingers in the
back of his throat, rotting
there, and he’s drowning in
acres of quicksand, filling his
ears like cotton until he can no longer
hear the wind that blows through him
no longer feel the nails that hold him
to the wooden cross, or the claws
of crow’s feet on his back

this is the scarecrow’s dream:
running barefoot down a dusty road
each breathe filling him near to bursting
shouting at the sky
singing sobbing howling laughing
a madman clad in sackcloth and ashes
while the fields burn behind him, the
thick smoke climbing up to cover the sun
while all around the starlings wheel and dive,
wheel and dive, like black confetti

– T.H. (2009)