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The Barn

Brian M Winningham

Wood greyed with age,

Wormed by rain, wind and sun

Like twisted subterranean trails;

Exposed tubes of fantastical charm.



Tin roof speckled red with neglect

Each successive sheet flapping at the edge.

Like a wheezy busted accordion

Screeching a jazz ensemble with every gale.



Hayloft barren, cold and empty

Once filled to the sagging trusses

With summer’s harvest and winter’s hope.

The floor now a mosaic of rotted wood and air.



Cribs once filled with corn, feed and horses

Now hold broken farm implements and

Stacks of crumbling wood perched on a wood stove

While furniture and barbed wire melt together into red dirt.



The barn’s song, sung upon the breezes

Tells of hay harvests, corn crops and Guinea Hens,

Of Herefords, Short Horns and Brahmas.

Of fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.



Soon the barn will crumble into ruin and be gone

Gently collapsed back into the soil that spawned it

Just like the family it once served, it will be but a memory.

Only laughter, love, hurt, anger, and the land live on.


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Brian Moran
Brian Moran
26 nov 2021

The life and death of a barn loved it, memories that

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