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