weathervane

the weathervane in question, how it sits
spun, spinning, mounted
in what air, what house, what barn or store
an arm coursing in sand, in sin
the justice of its resolve, a bellwether patinaed
blue and marbled, vinyl-sutured
father, upon this company our future may lay
hurricanes make the pines possible, the boxwoods go amok
perched like some red-throated lizard, some buzzsaw splitting the frame
straight through the wheat, the silo
perched there on top of the bird’s mind
ambient sounds through the valley
an American flag in a nativity scene.

The cock does not know direction
unless bells, bewarned of tokens and white cake
do not find the divot of her dimple
her mandibles, her candelabras open upon the house
an inverted chandelier, weather-soaked, a porous sack of potatoes
screaming through the foyer, children
waving their fingers at clouds, the hayloft, the long-range neighbors
meanwhile, nothing.
No wind, no currents. Jets occasionally pass in absolute silence
or they make the mere sound of a trailer hitch dropped
a chain released from the sea, drug out from the woods
ignorant and bloodied, drinking testosterone from a glass.

Child non-run, cropped and debonair, release
into your stillness, movement
a smoker’s lung animated, second-person
your second person
the barn now in the bird’s mind
in the writer’s mind, crumpled
fallen, animus mundi into the room
needing spiritus blown into the filter
exhaled into the death-life, the burgeoning patina
the gravel road to the neighbor’s home
paved in shadows, rocks and lines.

The weathervane in question, that is you
that is on you, that is this medieval roof
dancing on the head of a pin
your daughter does not point but paint
her house made of cloth squares
fragile and sagging, propped between chairs
the bird’s mind as it passes the stationary mold
compares ball joints to paths, mountings to shadows
ten thousand ellipses drawn just before it snows.