from the field notes: a late day journal entry:
At night "my father always went to the barn and checked the livestock before bed. The barn, late at night, in the cold of winter, is the most peaceful place in all the world" (Kathy Richter Shuler)
The photo above is of my mother driving the tractor on my grandmothers farm while she was pregnant with me.
This words below are a tribute to my father and the barn on the farm where he grew up . . .
recycled words
red barns and tin tractors
marshmallow clouds floating in unison
meander across halloween skies
beside the barn
up at the house
bales of stories from a proud porch
painted with memories
it's a new solstice now
chasing autumn
in a slow parade
of color and rusty breezes
then gone in surrender to a slow freeze
bald, hard, cold cracking branches
scratching and scripting harsh words of winter
into tomorrow's dialogue
out there from a northern distance
tomorrow's city lit skies
will let slip
a slow parade of white
sympathetic skies spread
a snow painted blanket
bleached of color
softening and soothing earths rough grit
and there beyond the cold
beyond snowy steps
in the heat of each other's arms
another surrender
this time
to studio lit indigo love
drenched with the light
of a blue neon moon
here
in the house beside the barn
slipping into sleep we wait
we wait for our after-dream morning
we wait to find out
if what we wanted was to make art
or if what we really wanted
was to be art