Free That Said by Jane Shore

than farmers
working in the fields.
No solitaries crucified on broom poles
meditating over a quarter acre of corn,
these posed in groups, in gay tableaux,
whole families of scarecrows
watching their gardens grow.
We drove past a family of scarecrow men
lovingly dressed in their Sunday best—
workshirts, overalls, and stovepipe hats.
Great-grandfather, Grandfather, Father, and Son
holding hands like a row of paper dolls,
passing on the deed to the farm
to the last son, the current one, the heir,
stretching out his hand to thin air.
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A few miles up the road
a scarecrow child was dressed for winter
in dungarees, sweater, mittens, and a scarf,
standing between his scarecrow mother and father,
whose broomstick arm stuck out
in a permanent gesture of waving hello—or goodbye—
depending on the direction
you were driving to—or from.
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That day, I was wearing an Indian cotton skirt
printed with huge vivid flowers.
A bee flew into the open window of the moving car
and tried to pollinate my skirt.
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Given the modest scale of things,
whose idea was it to build
“the largest lobster trap in the world,”
a wooden scaffolding the size of a cathedral?
How many weathered traps had we seen
stacked by the side of the road?
A lobster trap?—it was a tourist trap!
Inside, a little gift shop
sold the usual array of junk:
lobster ashtrays, lobster key rings,
and foot-long lobster-claw combs.
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Not nearly as grand, the crafts museum
masqueraded as a souvenir stand.
We arrived just before closing.
The curator had just taken out her teeth.
Tight-lipped but cheerful, she led us
through a room jammed from floor to ceiling
with antique spinning wheels.
It was like strolling through the inside of a clock.
She sat on a low stool, carding raw wool
into clouds that she proceeded to spin,
pumping her treadle like an organ pedal,
demonstrating, for at least the hundredth time that day,
one of the lost arts of the district,
kept just barely alive by her
and a few elderly lady volunteers.
Down the road lived her Micmac counterpart—
the last of her tribe who knew how
to weave baskets from sweet grass and porcupine quills.
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Crayoned signs read, PLEASE DON’T TOUCH!
the swatches of Scottish tartans and coats of arms,
and the bagpipe, a droopy octopus.
Don’t touch the yellowing scrimshaw,
the tiny ivory- and bone-handled tools
that tatted feverish edges on doilies and handkerchiefs
also on display. Don’t touch the battered toys—
dolls, locomotives, decoys, and the love letter
whose frilly signature’s a faded sepia lace.
In a separate glass case, a missionary’s
English-Micmac dictionary, and a pair
of beaded moccasins with stiff enormous tongues.
Of course, you can’t touch
them!
Or the sand-encrusted gold doubloon
shipwrecked off the coast like the rising moon—
lost, all lost, and then recovered.

Missing
These children’s faces printed on a milk carton—
a boy and a girl
smiling for their school photographs,
each head stuck atop a column
of vital statistics:
date of birth, height and weight, color
of eyes and hair.
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On a carton of milk.
Half gallon, a quart.
Of what use is the body’s
container, the mother weeping milk or tears.
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No amount of crying will hold it back
once it has begun its journey
as you bend all night over the toilet,
over a fresh bowl of water.
Coins of blood spattering the tile floor
as though a murder had been committed.
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Something wasn’t right, they say,
you are lucky.
Too soon to glimpse the evidence
of gender, or to hear a heartbeat.
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Put away the baby book, the list of names.
There are four thousand, at least, to choose from.
No need now to know their derivations,
their meanings.
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Faces pass you in the supermarket
as you push the wire cart down the aisles.
The police artist flips through pages
of eyes and noses, assembling a face,
sliding the clear cellophane panels into place.
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You take a quart of