Straws of a New Order

What’s the purpose of a scarecrow

in a cucumber patch?  Does it provide

the young cucs a secure environment

to grow in cucdom?  Does it provide the crows

a centering purpose for their lives? An idol

to worship?  A place to gather, to rest their claws

before descending for the kill?  Do they hang

out boasting of the cucumbers they’ve seen,

the delicacies they’ve sampled in gardens

of the world? 

And what does the scarecrow think

of himself?  Does he dream of gardens

beyond his own?  Wish that he could select

a new jacket from L.L. Bean?  Meet a mate

on an evening date?  How would Facebook

change his boredom?  Provide connectivity!  He’d

give all the straw of one arm to be able to send

a single tweet.  He knows. Yes, he knows
that at best he is the limit of one man’s imagination,

the fragments of cloth no longer valued.

His  creator worked in the vacuum

of his culture.  He was locked into mere craft

that replicates the images of his race, incarcerated

in stock icons. He will have to jimmy the lock, tunnel

beneath the cell, steal the the key to open rusty hinges

if he is to escape.  Somehow, he’ll have to kindle

a new fire, burn every scarecrow, serrate his eyeballs,

pluck them out of the shared illusion of his race.

He must sacrifice more than a dozen crows
if he hopes to gain the edge, to broil his task 
over the flame of artifice.