WEATHER VANE

A chicken, four compass points, and an arrow

Placed on the peak of a second-story roof

Said little about the wind--

Just its direction--

Nothing more than a useless ornament,

Someone noted and looked away.

Until one day it fell to the ground in a high wind,

Toppled from its hundred-year-old perch

Without ceremony or ritual.

Tossed to the back of an old chicken house,

Among galvanized chicken feeders,

Nothing more than a discarded relic,

Someone noted and closed the old wooden doors

To the brooder where baby chickens had been raised.

I kept looking up for the old weather vane

As if it were a bad habit that I couldn’t break,

My eyes scanning the roof line without seeing

The wind’s direction among compass point letters,

Without seeing the motion of the arrow.

There was only an empty space

Below the twisted oak leaves.

Where the weather vane had been,

There was no direction,

No magnetic north,

No compass,

And the sun was covered

By dark wind clouds that

Made clocks run back and forth

Arrowless,

Chaos shook the window panes of the house

And rain shuttered the glass

Until I could bear it no longer

And set out for the chicken house

Drenched and blinded

To search for the old weather vane

Thrown into a dark corner,

Useless and bent,

Rusted and shabby,

I carried it to a metal worker,

Who restored each part

And ascended a ladder to install

It back on the roof peak beneath the tree leaves,

Where it makes sense of the wind and

Its breathless motion. 

© cmheuer, 2018