The Scarecrow

Kevin Cahill

I see him in the field,

drinking, asserting

he’s under threat,

that he’s becoming

extinct in the wild.

I tell him his status

is least concern.

But he’s spitting

his hay spine

into the wind,

leaning against

the cowshed,

slurring things

about civilisation,

how he doesn’t want

to be part of it.

He’s spending

too much time like this:

bingeing,

breaking apart his head,

tearing up the grocery-bags

I used to stuff

his buttocks.

I want to stop him,

I want him to call off

the crows,

the rooks raking out his eyes.

I put my hand over his mouth,

I block him from breathing,

his face is flushing,

it doesn’t matter

if his stomach is full

of thickets

and branches,

and not gnawn bones,

or that he has never

used blood as food,

the rising tide

will not spare him,

his corkweight skeleton

will march with us

to the bottom of the sea.

KEVIN CAHILL is a poet from Cork. His work has appeared in Poetry Ireland Review, Wild Court, Westerly, Banshee, Channel Magazine, and Causeway/Cabhsair. He is a recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland Literature Bursary Award for 2025.