Smith, xxx

That Big Red Barn at

Miller's Farm

janie lynn and me summer of eighty-three
had us a spot down by the old red barn
there at the miller place  .  .  .  she and me in
mama’s buick cruising the country without
a care in the world.     that summer I’d gone by
the miller farm every time jeff and I went
fishing the creek down that country lane, just
a country mile off the county highway
there in the midst of those ancient majestic
elms and oaks and a sycamore or two—
used to be a row of hedges, osage
orange trees, but they cut that down a few
years back—that summer, though, I recall those
bluegills dancing in cicada breeze, summer
trees and the smell of cottonwoods floating
down, their seeds like lazy snow along the water
and we thinking heaven must be just down
that country lane, maybe somehow inside
the miller’s big red barn, beside the hay roll,
and that summer, janie lynn my angel . . .
 

~ David M Pitchford