It doesn’t stand for anything.
Its rusting blades.
Its ladder tower. All of it,
it seems, frozen in place.
My neighbor says
 
it’s the soul
of our neighborhood.
Until today. When both
of us notice it isn’t there.
As if the wind finally
 
knocked it over. Or
the crows flew it away.
And not a couple
of local men who,
now I’m told, wanted
 
to take it apart,
lay it onto their flatbed
truck. And reassemble it
in another field,
behind, perhaps, a church
 
graveyard. Where,
the hymn sings, anything
broken, still standing,
has another use.
Can stand for what isn’t
 
seen. What’s known
by feeling. Meaning
the burnished, visible
maple leaves we couldn’t
quite see before. Without
 
looking through the rungs
of that windmill’s stand.
Listening to the song,
metal on metal, the blades
almost sang.
Gary Margolis