Strong.

Wyeth, N.C., View of Behind Barn John Andress Farm, 1921

The BARN

Hello, old barn, sitting there, looking so forlorn

You with your weathered siding, and red paint, away, so worn;

Some of you with stone foundations, now from age crumbling,

Eventually causing you to fall down, with a great, noisy rumbling.

If you could talk, what would you, to me, say?

I’m sure you did much more than be a place just to store some hay.

“Just,” the word, not meant to you slight;

Without enough hay, in the old days, a farm would lose its might.

Feed for the horses and cows, so their work they could do;

Horses in their harnesses to plow, the cows, so they could make milk and moo.

From the milk comes the cream and that sweet, sweet butter;

Little cows drink it, too, getting it straight, right off the udder.

Meat and milk, and fertilizer, too,

When from the barn, they clean the cows’ doo doo,

Hauling it to the fields and the garden, to them both fertilize,

Helping the farmer his dreams soon to realize.

I’m sure you’d tell stories of the farmer sitting up all night

To help birth a foal or calf, not coming out, so right.

Or would you tell of how you kept all the animals warm

While a three-day blizzard blew all over the farm?

Do you remember the laughter, and fun the kids had

Jumping from the hayloft into piles of hay, so glad?

Or riding down the hay loft bale lifter on the pulley rope

While a bail went up to the hayloft; at least, you did that hope.

What about the winters, how the wagon you did store,

And all the equipment and seed for planting; and oh, so much more:

Vegetables from the garden, buried in one of the empty stalls

So you all winter have vegetables, which you could on, for dinner, call.

What about the times you held a big barn dance,

Many couples during them, signing on for a lifetime of romance.

Kids hiding under the tarp in the old wagon’s bed,

Playing hide and seek, after supper they’d been fed.

Or every Sunday before the town’s church was built,

You let us worship God in you, some of us, confessing all our guilt.

And during a picnic when came the rain

You sheltered us in place, so at the picnic we could remain.

Then the time when the family home burned,

We all moved in with you, you never would us spurn.

But now farming has had so much change;

Very few have cattle that still graze on the range.

Powerful tractors, pulling multi-bottom plows,

Covering so much land, much more than a horse would allow.

Horses, if any longer around, now just for fun,

No longer used for farm implements that they used to run.

So now you sit empty, or crammed full with stuff.

Many let your maintenance go, and you start to look so tough.

A few cut you down, turning you into a shop.

Lowering you several feet, as your sides they do chop.

Better than letting the weather, you, completely wreck.

Little by little, it does at you, relentlessly, and without mercy peck.

Many farmers moving to town, moving or tearing down the house,

Leaving you alone, home for more than one wandering little mouse.

Do they leave you stand because they have of you memories so good,

Or because they’d like to use you again, if some way, they only could?

No matter, you soon start to deteriorate;

With no one to weather’s damage on you ameliorate.

First the white trim peels off around the windows and doors.

With the passing of time, your red paint becomes no more.

Then the wind removes your outside shutters.

Now the weather will you inside shudder.

Windows broken out by passing vandals;

Wish the law would catch, and them really handle.

Finally, the wind breaks one of your great doors free;

Now the blowing wind can go on a real wrecking spree.

Slamming back and forth, as with the wind it does fight.

Then a final big blow and the door takes to undirected flight.

Now nothing will stop the elements and their wrath;

For sure now, you are on your very last path.

Years pass, you start leaning to one side;

Beginning now, the start of your inevitable downward slide.

Snow piles up on your roof with many shingles missing,

Pushing down hard on your weakened, buckled wall siding.

You hold strong; don’t know what keeps you standing,

Tilting so much, you make the “Tower of Pisa” look upstanding.

You are passing, now, the stage of reconstruction;

Soon, so soon now, you’ll face your final and complete destruction.

Goodbye, old barn, you billboard of an America now away gone;

With sadness, I turn away from you, and begin to move on.

Hope your old wood and siding can somehow be used again,

Maybe, at least, as picture frames; I hope so, my old friend.

That way on the world, you can still look out,

Maybe at the same time, a barn picture, you will tout.

Your cupola now is tilting wildly to one side,

Moving in the wind, soon to the ground it will slide.

Your weather vane still spins, showing where the wind does blow;

If it could also talk, what else could we know?

Looking out on the farm as long as did the barn,

I’m sure, for us, it could spin a few good yarns.

These days barns and weather vanes have become nearly extinct;

To me, that is a situation that does a little bit more, than stink.

Equipment and critters, now in pole barns stuck;

Cheaper to build, and animal droppings to out muck.

They all look alike, buildings with no personality or expression.

The demise of these old barns gives me just a touch of depression.

A few still stand a lonely vigil upon the plains;

As I drive by them, I hope they can always remain.

Because when I look at a pole barn, at me, it doesn‘t look back.

Making my heart sad, because character, it does lack.

Kirby Brandhagen