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Watching my sculptor friend reclaim and transform an abandoned barn into living and working
space catalyzed this poem. In the first stanza,
I evoke the vanished history of the barn, imagining farm
workers and draft horses. In the second, I direct the readers eye to what the sculptor
has placed in the barn -- her drafting table and welding
tools -- and I show my admiration for her grit and
determination.
Something to consider:All of us nest and make homes that speak to our ideas about ourselves.
How might you use architecture or interior design to characterize a friend?
Living in the Barn
Beside you in the truck, I almost forget you are a woman, thirty, turning the wheel,
slamming the door. You could be a boy, fifteen, slim and eager for exercise in a soiled shirt
and jeans. By the time you closed the deal, the animals
were gone, but their ghosts raise their heads as we pass.
Black and white cows reclaim the pasture; curious billy goats
eye two women rattling up the drive. Like an archetypal barn
from memory, the barn slumps broad and red in the rain.
Now the great hayloft holds your bed and table. In dreams, the farm boys bale and hurl their
burdens into the atrium; I feel the heavy hooves of
Clydesdales stamping in their stalls; the walls still
hold their scent, their hairs, their troughs, their significant
sighs.
You have restored yourself by restoring this barn --
long days under the sun's hot hand, hours at the drafting table --
planning for the time you will have what you need:
a place to work, a place to live. Like barn swallows high in the rafters
your sculptures float and fly, wings beating against weathered wood.
In the studio, your welding tools assume the shapes
of fantastic creatures, the bronze and brass of your trade.
You lace your boots, tie back your hair, prepare for work like a farmer whose animals,
like a ring of friends, surround her.