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Barn Life
I miss the barn, the hay loft,
a place to listen to the midday sun
creaking through old wood.,
the small clouds of horse flies
moving as one in their jet-pack bodies,
that rose and fell
their small engines stuttering.
The humpbacked skeleton of a tractor
where goats built their castles,
the oily emptiness of its heart
as it clanked under their hooves
into a gearless life once more.
When the empty stalls echoed a warning
to the horses that no longer stabled there,
I would get up into the sagging rafters
where feather whiskered winds
rustled dust through broken boards,
It used to take them an hour
before they knew I was missing,
later they knew where to find me.
I miss the soul-deep smell
of dry leather tackle long unharnessed,
the empty cans of linseed and engine oil,
the old shotgun so rusted
it grew out of a dirt-caked bucket
as brown as a whittled flower stalk.
All gone, the barn, the farm house
and ‘they’ - gone now.
Yet sometimes they call to me
as I dream in a lullaby loft,
and I still a little disappointed
to be found.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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