Scarecrow Believes
What is a ghost if not misplaced energy,
an apprehension or the sum of invisible integers
and the properties they possess? I preside over
this sea of maize, tracking clouds, noting patterns
up high and among the flowing stalks, absorbing
minutiae, assigning connections, piecing together bits,
moment to thought, soil to trickle, flutter to gain.
Energy. Inertia. Waves, converted. If I had a bed
I would not neglect to look under it. The closet door
would remain open, a nightlight positioned nearby
with perhaps a mirror or two angled to offer clarity,
and the radio tuned always to jazz, providing little
purchase to any ill-intentioned spirit. The power of
beauty transfixes, even as it carries me far from my
station, from hilltop to plains to glowering moon.
If neither place nor reason, what consumes
our spiritual remnants, what directs our currents
to the next, and each successive, landing? Crows
have long been considered conduits to the afterlife,
but they exist here, in the now. I do not perspire but
fix my gaze on numbers and their tales, on zero and
the history of nothing, on unseen fingers walking up
my spine, shedding a residue of snow, of mercury
and latent images and dormant seeds in the world
underfoot, acknowledging the wonders of what
can’t be proven, what won’t be held or seen. Still, I
add and subtract, unclench my fingers and accept the
quiet, caught forever within the limits of the boundless,
under the sky, in space, within the improbable.
“Scarecrow Believes” was published in May 2017 in GFT Presents: One in Four, a semiannual, print literary journal published by GFT Press.
Peeking under my bed, I find an extremely large bed, a tattered magazine, dust bunnies and…something without a name…!
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Ooh, those nameless things can be extremely interesting.
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I should stay up tonight and see if I spot anything in that case! 🤔😁
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👻
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If scarecrow believes, surely we can… 😉 Nice work.
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Thanks, Anthony. Believe!
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Scarecrow sounds like you quite a bit. enjoying numbers, wondering about what can’t be proven, comfortable in oxymoron. Either you have always been Scarecrow or it has killed Okaji & taken over his blog.
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There are some striking similarities…
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How can i know who is really saying this?
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’tis I, he says. Grain of salt, and all that. But which eye is which?
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Argh.
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I often get that same response from my wife.
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We have that in common.
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I’d imagine that we do, indeed.
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This weekend just keeps getting better … now Scarecrow has me giving thanks for a bed to look under, and puzzling about the implications of jazz music upon ill-intentioned spirits … My favorite bit here is the unseen fingers walking up Scarecrow’s spine!
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Scarecrow believes in the power of music!
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A perfect scarecrow musing
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Thanks, Derrick. That Scarecrow is a thinker. I’m more likely to muse about what’s for dinner. 🙂
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🙂
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Full of wonder, from start to finish. But Scarecrow contains multitudes. (K)
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Scarecrow does indeed. I need to channel more of Scarecrow into my life. 🙂
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