THE CENTURY BARN
Rodney J. Hugen
Living in veneered lunacy, I long for truer woods,
textured, knotted, hewn, splintered, gashed,
watching how oak wears old,
or mahogany takes on richer hues
from the constant eroding;
how pine splits and rips before axe head blows
and weeps thick sap tears
that dribble lifetime slow to ground.
Still, I live where walls are white and fabricated
pictures are all rightly arranged
each room serves a proper purpose
fake leather chairs, nylon carpets, acrylic walls
silken flowers never found in nature
I remember the Century Barn was knitted together
with hand formed beams and wooden pegs
No iron nail gouged its rough comeliness,
in rafters you could see where ropes had chafed
to bring great girders to their place.
Someone soft tinted them with the red stains of Iowa
and covered the steepled roof with shake shingle peaks.
In the end, it all rotted away to smoother beauty
losing place to the relentless earth,
becoming one with silk tasseled cornfields,
a small mound in a field of grain.
Only visible to those who knew it had been there.
I know trees had to die to build that barn,
but there was grace in their dying
when they became offerings in the hands of skilled men,
and not particle board ugliness, strange resins,
or this machine formed table where I sit
made to look exactly like a hundred others
with fake grain streaks and perfectly painted knotholes.
I wonder about the half-life of laminated tables
How they die? Who weeps their passing?
Does anyone rub oil, stain, or love into them?
July 5,2004 |
