Nights

How many long nights

until it’s corn-planting time,

and then till harvest?

Breath

Geese in the flyway,

stir the garden with your breath!

Let the new corn come!

What are they singing,

the corn, the wind, and the geese?

This is a new song!

Crow raiding my corn,

it is time for you to leave,

or I’ll fetch my gun.

bedraggled scarecrow

still chasing grackles away

from the sweet corn patch

first nap of summer—

a migrant fresh out of work

dreams of picking corn

scarecrow in the corn

his weeping muffled by straw

falling from his mouth