Lament Of A Scarecrow Poem by Santosh Bakaya

A frisky squirrel slithered up his terracotta head
Merrily flirting with his turban dark red
A naughty egret chased a buffalo and pecked
Two birds who joyously chirped and necked.

Under the watchful eye of the laboring mother
And the antics of his bony half-clad brother
In a patchwork hammock calmly slept a child
While the feisty birds around it merrily filed.

The scarecrow watched the egret with his only eye
As lightning staggered across the dark, ominous sky.
With a menacing cackle, and sigh upon sigh.
He shuddered, was another catastrophe nigh?

Was he again falling off the edge of his world?
With an incipient sob, his painted lips curled.
Life was putrid and could be so painfully mean
It was not with envy, his shirt was a pale green.

He hid the sad turbulence in his hayry chest
When a peacock vain swayed its crest
Fluffing its flamboyant feathers, strutting around
Squawking merrily on the rain drenched ground.


The red turban scintillating and brand new
Now on his wobbly head hung askew.
From above there was a thunderous cough
The turban shook and almost fell off.

His skull rumbled and felt like clay
This way and that it started to sway.
The rain whipped and lashed and battered
His clothes already tattered.

His skull shook like a balloon on a thin stick
From his neck he could not ease that crick.
The rain fell in torrents as lightning shimmered
The sun was jailed, and no hope glimmered.

For days on end, he had stood, arms wide
Taking rain, thunder and sleet in his stride.
Stoically he had endured calamities all
The hail, the sun, the storm and fall.


Half an eye he cast on himself shabbily attired
Surrounded by bramble and burr, feeling tired.
'One eye I had lost in the last storm
Ah, I feel so weak, pathetic my form.

The attire oft proclaims the man
Is this what says the wise human?
But I am not even a mannequin
My smile is now a lopsided grin.

Alas, I am just a parody, a spoof.
Life indeed is vile and mean, oof!
But have I not been a diligent doer
What if I look dishevelled and poor?

In the middle of the field I stand tethered
Many a storm valiantly have I weathered.
Scaring the predating birds with my looks
Who plunder stalks and then hide in nooks.

Often I want to dance and prance around
And like the peacock go round and round
'A soul of lead so stakes me to the ground
I cannot move", alas am woefully bound.

Romeo's ghost infiltrated this body mine
And for love I horribly pine, oh how I pine
Ever since I wore a writer's discarded hat
Silly me, I have imagined this and that.'

As though by some extra sensory perception
The cicadas heard the scarecrow's lamentation.
At night these Samaritans good, happily shrilled
And the scarecrow with their choir was thrilled.

Next morning out on bail was the radiant sun
No longer in jail, in a burst of rambunctious fun
In his direction it sent one warm, golden kiss
Ah bliss, one golden kiss, at last was his.


No longer did the sad scarecrow wallow in self-pity
His resuscitated heart now started singing a ditty.
No longer did he feel poverty stricken or cold
Sheathed in sheer gold, he felt confident and bold.

He felt a tingling in his hand me down sole
Into a merry dance now broke his own soul.