The Friday Poem on 21/03/2024
There’s something about this beautifully eerie narrative that stays with you. Giving up a farm to the scarecrows sounds innocent enough – but these scarecrows are strawmen, lots of them. They take over the house; and then they too disappear. How very strange it all is! The light left for the “lost son” is haunting, as are “the runes we’d failed to read”. There are poems you can enjoy without understanding them. This is one of them.
The Inheritors
Before we gave up the farm to the scarecrows,
we trod the bounds one last time, following
the tracks where the muntjacs quickstepped along
the edge of the world. Their two-toed prints
were like runes we’d failed to read. Heavy-feathered,
a buzzard hauled itself into a tree while finches
were swatted by the breeze. Starlings made melodies
of themselves. We could see the strawmen coming
over the fields, but still there was time to go
to the willow in the glade where a jam-jar hung for a lost son.
We left a light for him to find his way. From the lane,
we watched them file into our house, slip into our clothes.
But by winter they were gone too, their shirts blown
clean of straw. Nothing before; now nothing again.
