Barn Poem by H. Rand Swansey

Life, he said, is like that old barn there, once vital, soundly joined with the earth, aligned with the seasons, the floorboards heavy with stories. Listen to their creaking enthusiasms, their still-visible treads whispering tales of generations past as perpetual and inextricably linked as the grains running deep within them.I knew he remembered something I couldn't. I knew his bones swayed the same angle as those beams and that only he, rooted like that barn in the soil of a thousand lifetimes, could remove me from my present and into my what-was-to-come.So I listened.Do not fear their cryptic sighs, he said, but tread confidently upon them with ears and soul wide open, and glean the bounty that they offer.Feel how the draft enters the crack in the sliding door. The whistle of it, drawing you close.Surrender to its gravity, knowing that wherever it takes you, you aren't lost and you haven't died and no one has forgotten your name.