The Weathervane

each with a chain, each with

one member of a family

standing together now

for the last time, each

wagon pointed in three

directions of the compass.

The young white man

at the fourth watches

the father loaded up bodily

by a mob and when attached

firmly yanks so continuously

against the anchor and chain

he breaks his arm at the shackle

and the mother meanwhile

remembers her finest day

long ago fallen from her body

like a veil while her new

owner leers at what is left,

and the child meanwhile inside

her sixth year of breathing

the air and thinking appears

to Lincoln watching her exactly

like his sister on the day she died—

the very opposite of paralyzed,

her face contorted by tears.

Now Giddyup the drivers say

and the horses flicker their ears.

When the wagons are gone

there is only one point left

to the compass and that is a man

one day endowed by the people

and not by god who is pure loss

anyways in this study of Lincoln

for a weathervane and a lightning rod.

1831