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Scythe

By Stuart Dybek b. 1942 Stuart Dybek

In the barn demoted to garage,

the ax in a cherry stump can’t be budged.

Daylight perforates siding despite

the battered armor of license plates—

corroded colors, same state: decay,

their dates the only history

of whoever tilled the soil

and left, as a welcome, the skull

of a possum nailed to the door, and the trail

of lime to the torn sack

in a corner where cobwebs festoon a scythe.

Rusted sharp, it sings

when he grips its splintery handle, swings,

and crowns topple from Queen Anne’s lace.

Source: Poetry (June 2012).

Biography

Poet and fiction writer Stuart Dybek was born in 1942 and raised on the South Side of Chicago. He attended Loyola University in Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His collections of poetry include Brass Knuckles (1979) and Streets in Their Own Ink (2004). His works of fiction, including the short story collections Childhood and Other Neighborhoods (1980) and The Coast of Chicago (1990), and the novel-in-stories I Sailed . . .

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