A Child's Escape to the Barn

My readers, my friends, know that I grew up on a farm in southwest Georgia. I loved the barn on the farm. As you can tell in this poem, I found lots to be interested in. The smells, the light and darkness, the animals and just the atmosphere was comforting.

A Child’s Escape to the Barn

By Glenda Council Beall

I enter the barn through the corn crib.

Flour dusts the floor around the hand mill.

Gray mice feed on cracked kernels;

either very brave or too greedy

to notice my intrusion.

The fragrance of cottonseed meal,

heady in my nostrils, tempts me

to see if it really tastes like toasted nuts.

Light shoots into darkness through narrow

crevices between wide rough boards.

Rays seek out the spiders' lacy traps

lining corners, the angle made by roof and wall.

Chickens, fat and full, sit placid,

in straw-filled boxes hung high above

the ground, protected from predators

except one that coils, swallows their eggs.

Musty smells arise from the lot

where hard-worked mules munch on grain

in troughs held fast to cured pine walls

by hammered twenty-penny nails.

I climb the ladder to the loft.

Wide eyes of feral kittens peep

from behind bales of hay. They skitter

away, tails aloft, straight as flag poles.

Tiny English sparrows twitter and flit.

Some nest on rafters under the eaves. 

I’m a natural born citizen of this place

but they have made a home here.

Without warning a summer shower pounds

the tin roof, runs off and wets the black mix

of dung and dirt, serves me up an odor rich

with life. I'm overcome with contentment.

This poem and others similar to it will be included in the book, Paws, Claws, Hooves, Feathers and Fins, by Estelle Darrow Rice and Glenda Council Beall. Use the contact box at the top of the Sidebar to order the book at the discount price of $14.00 plus $3.00 S&H

This lovely creature has a story in the book.