The Old Barn

Walk up to the old barn

where the floors smell like memories

of hard working days

and when your brother was married

we snap pictures on ladders and hear ourselves echo

a collection of voices started decades ago

there are nails in the beamboards and the pails in the closets

and brown colored time on the necks of the locks

and you take my mind back to 1904

when the nails held our lanterns

locks needn't guard doors

two kids with our features

deal dusty old cards

their grandfather left them

before he entered the war

we break down the walls when we hoot like barn owls

and the wind and the cold sings along but it howls

so we dangle our legs in an old writer's coffin

and listen as ghosts all around us start talking

and you take my heart back to 1860

when the plow and the planter

were worth everything