Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome
Nothing about me shines or sparkles. If asked,
I would place myself among the discarded —
remnant cloth and straw, worn, inedible,
useless, if not for packaging intended to
convey a certain message, which I of course
have subverted to “Welcome, corvids!” Even
my voice lies stranded in the refuse, silent
yet harmonious, clear yet strangled, whole
and unheard, dispersed, like tiny drops of
vapor listing above the ocean’s swell, enduring
gray skies and gulls and those solemn rocks
bearing their weight against the white crush.
Why do I persist? What tethers a shadow
to its body? How do we hear by implication
what isn’t there? Bill Monroe hammered
his mandolin, chopping chords, muting,
droning, banging out incomplete minors
to expectant ears, constructing more than
a ladder of notes climbing past the rafters
into the smoky sky. What I sing is not
heard but implied: the high lonesome, blue
and old-time, repealed. Crushed limestone
underfoot. Stolen names, borrowed sounds.
Dark words subsumed by light, yellowed,
whitened, faded to obscurity, to obscenity.
“Scarecrow Sings the High Lonesome” first appeared in Crannóg, in June 2017.
O at the Edges 
This is excellent.
Also reminds me (just because of the phrase) of one of my favorite songs: “When our boots they hit the ground/they made a high and lonesome sound….” (Gaslight Anthem).
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Thanks very much, Chris. Mandolin music fascinates me. Such sound from a small instrument.
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Always good to hear from scarecrow. Everything is implied now it seems. (K)
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Thanks, Kerfe. But some of those implications…ouch!
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indeed
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Though Scarecrow might perceive self as lonesome, the corvids surely have an opposing perspective, swooping in to gather at the feet of their beacon, adding their audibles to Scarecrow’s mostly inaudible, collectively a choir singing hymns of collaboration …
(Hugs to Scarecrow)
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I think Scarecrow is a good collaborator, especially with the right sort.
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