Scarecrow: the Road to Toulouse 2

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as if stirring leaves to find some hidden thing. "If I were a bird," I said, "I'd know half of everything." Her discretion let me recalculate, ride a while with them who fly the land, the grass, who know all root and leaf and bark, alive and dead. The scarecrow back there: part of the half they did not know? Much flesh they know (the chipmunk's twittery nose, the hippo thrashing), and little in the seas they think is strange. Birds know history — a thought to keep me flying; wherever trees have stood birds exchanged interpretations, cancelled out with a chuk-chuk-chuk simple facts (names of events below, above), negotiating holes (like signs, intentions, signatures), their perfect eyes remembering the scattered scarecrows left by cannonball, musketry, and cutlass; the special Black ones hanging from the trees, mangled by the personal X Of Dixie (the one receding back there was not Black? the birds would know). We know the ritual: the hunger-chants expanding trees, the downward flutterswoops, the legacies free seeded in the field picked up, the guardian private breeze aroused, swollen to a danger-wind, DEATH! sensed and seized, the only word the scarecrow-men obey: they move grotesquely, and from their slightest flap of tinsel, drift of odor, the air is filled with chaos. 1980 1983

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Poem written by Emanuel, detailing a drive through the countryside where the narrator sees a scarecrow hanging in a tree. Raised on Page. (Page 2)

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  • type
    Image
  • created on
  • file format
    jpg
  • file size
    609 kB
  • container title
    James A. Emanuel Papers
  • creator
    James A. Emanuel
  • issue
    BOX 4 FOLDER 26, "The Chopping Block (Selected Poems)," draft 1988 (1 of 2)
  • rights
    James A. Emanuel Estate
  • rights holder
    James A. Emanuel Estate
  • version
    Unknown