Lost For Ideas, So I'll Post A Poem!

This blog post, albeit three days late, is about exactly what the title implies. It's late on a Saturday night, I'm home alone listening to Pandora at full volume - which is what I always do when I'm home alone, and in all honesty I don't really feel like writing. So I'll post a poem I just completed a few hours ago. My mom has been after me to write a poem about my Great-Aunt Evelyn's farm in Dagget, Michigan so I finally sat down and wrote one. I surprised myself by writing four pages! It's amazing the difference between what you think will come out on paper and what does. Never underestimate yourself, that's for sure.

Anyway, just some quick background on my Great-Aunt's farm. It's one of my favorite places ever, and I don't get there often enough. She has an old house that used to be a log cabin when it was first built. Now it has clapboard siding outside and paneling inside. There used to be cows in the huge white barn but now there's just old farm equipment and art supplies that a guy uses to paint on pieces of wood. His work is absolutely beautiful. She lives in an area that has a lot of abandoned barns, farms and houses around. Of course, those of you who know me find it has no surprise that I would be strongly attracted to such things. Someday I dream of driving around and snapping a thousand pictures of each of these beautifully dilapidated structures. There's even a house that was struck by lightning at some point a while ago, but sadly it fell down sometime last year.

But, before I start writing a blog post instead of posting my poem...here it is! Enjoy. And to my readers, thank you for enduring the spaces between posts. :)

My Home of a Different Color (Tribute to Aunt Evelyn's Farm)

Fields bend inward, creating
hollows where farms are clustered.
Each outbuilding reflecting the land around it.
Barn stands proud, curved roof mimicking rise
of hill beyond, or ray of sun slanting down to arch
across whispering wheat fields. White paint flaking
upon graying wood like layers of aging hair slowly
thinning out. Hayloft soars above, remnants of hay
cows linger amidst web-adorned rafters, a simpler
time trapped within its walls, like a book from long ago
stored on a shelf, stories within yellowed pages forgotten.

House faces the barn, two old men rocking aimlessly on a porch,
nowhere to go, no one to meet, just a cud to chew.
Like an old afghan stuffed in an attic trunk, it has
taken on the smells of country life. Faded couch
before a window, chair beside a table stacked with
magazines new and old. Wooden door where
a skeleton key still turns its lock, faint click of
intricate parts beckoning of a vintage time.
A time this house still remembers from photographs
faded and darkened, from windows staring out at
fields still the same, yet forever changed.

Kitchen the place where all the veins unite,
a beating heart whose lifeblood is the amiable
burst of laughter, the clank of dishes
and forks, the open and shut of cabinets
as meals are served, more than hunger satisfied.
Narrow staircase leads to a labyrinth of rooms.
Floor sags, forcing the foot to acknowledge the
history that sleeps beyond the floorboards.

A lumpy mattress, springs poking like a
mocking finger from beneath fabric is still
somehow comfy. Is it this place that brings
such comfort, such peace? I know in my dreams
it is. Smaller room tucked beneath the angle
of the roof, a shadowbox of a life now passed,
memory imprinted within the space like so many
others before it. Another chapter written and
concluded, fresh pages fluttering in the wind,
awaiting time's pen, awaiting another century.

Creaks and groans follow as you walk the halls,
a mischievous floorboard? Or yet another stroke
on the violin of country life, that violin where the bow
is woven back and forth like the rustle of leaves
in a tree or a field of wheat shifting with the breeze?
Tiny feet scuttle across the ground, a shock of feathers
and comical explanations all you see and hear, A red house tucked
beneath a tree their home. Another type of feet does
roam, a quick eye scanning for a pink tail weaving
through long grass in a ditch. Fed on the porch,
sometimes stroked by a loving hand, always searching.

Succession of of pets and animals have come before them,
some remembered, others vague memories like an
ornament high on a tree, barely discernible.
Driveway bends with the grass, leading to a narrow
road. Hill obscures barn beyond, its broken spine
a silent reminder of the trials of country life. Do
other barns which stand empty look on in fear?

House stands in its dilapidated shadow, befalling
same fate. Families passed in and out its door,
never staying, a heart fighting to find a vein that
isn't dry. Down the road another farm, stripped of
paint, windows broken like a mirror no longer
wanting to reflect its eminent future. A miniature
ghost town, a blank gravestone marker, yet it
is intriguing nonetheless. this country life,

this home of old and new, is where I find
a part of myself instantly runs for those hills,
for that lumpy mattress, for that aging barn,
for that narrow staircase...when I find myself
in the city. I have known the whine, the twang,
the melodious tune of that country violin in
my stories and dreams since long ago. How I

reach for it amidst chapters and words, amidst
photographs an magazines, within my
imagination like watching a painting unfold
before you and knowing it was familiar, like
you would treasure it deeply before the first
stroke had been laid on the canvas.
Someday I will stop abandoning that part of
myself like so many homes left to decay
and be slowly robbed by nature, and embrace
it instead. That place where I write will be real,

that magical house full of drafty windows,
complaining floorboards, scarred woodwork
and cracked, plaster walls will be not the home
of a beloved character...by my own. Until then
there is a place where I can go, to satisfy the thirst
for that sparkling stream running thickly through
my veins. It is at the end of a gravel drive, where
a white house and barn stand as quiet and humbly
as the woman who owns them. A place where I
feel at home, the place where my imagination
and heart lie. A place that is both near and far.
A place I call my home of a different color.