When we were kids, my brother and I would play this game: open up a book full of pictures (usually an Audubon Society Field Guide) and, as quickly as you can, put your finger on your favorite. My brother rapidly tired of this game, but I never did; a book of birds or gems and my own power of selection could keep me rapt for hours.
Much later, I came to stand in front of the wall of weathervanes on the third floor of the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I decided to play the old game: I tried to pick the most objectively perfect of them all. In a narrow category like 19th-century American weathervanes, mostly depicting roosters or “weather cocks,” you would think there would be a clear winner: one with the most pleasing proportions and liveliest flow of line, the David of iron or copper cocks.
A rooster weathervane, circa 1850, from Canada. On view in gallery G304.
But when it comes to iron cocks, does the golden ratio matter? This elegant bird might please da Vinci, but that one looks alive. I found myself caught by elegance here, off-kilter strutting energy there, and I couldn’t decide; I flipped between this one and that one and that one like, well, a weathervane.
And I have never been able to decide the same way twice. Sometimes my preference falls on a magnificent cock with a naïve shape and a baroque comb. Sometimes I lean toward the horse leaping through the hoop (a rarity among weathervanes). Sometimes it’s the patina and not the object that gets me. Sometimes I simply take the first one my eye falls on.
This handmade weathervane rested proudly atop a barn in Red Hook, New York, until it was purchased in the 1970s. On view in gallery G304.
This is becoming a parable about taste and love, I admit. But let’s turn it another direction: imagine all these weathervanes spinning atop barns across America, showing the shifts of the winds that brought ships home, or swept in early snow, or parted a wave of grain so that you could see your beloved for the first time—or the last time—turning towards you or away.
Lightsey Darst is a poet, writing instructor, dancer, and dance critic in Minneapolis. Her debut poetry collection, Find the Girl, won the Minnesota Book Award in 2011. Her latest collection, Dance, was published in fall 2013 by Coffee House Press.