I stood determined through the years
behind the house near the edge of the field
offering my shelter to farm animals;
to the mother pig with her eleven piglets
that would squeal and run about
but mostly to the dairy cows that were milked
in the white-washed milk-house with many stanchions,
a spring fed trough always kept the creamy liquid cooled.
Freshly baled hay would be stacked neatly
until the kids came along and rearranged to make mazes
where they played for hours in the hayloft; the boys would
come in with their BB guns to shoot the rats
scaring the pigeons so they fluttered crazily among my rafters.
Those were the days that I served a purpose
there were many of us around, but I was most proud.
The old lady that lived in the house planted a garden every year
always thankful for the yield to feed her growing children.
She wore an apron and a wide straw hat keeping the sun
from burning fair skin; her young girls would chase the
chickens out with brooms saving the zucchini blooms,
while her husband tilled the field with a pair of mares
planting corn in furrowed rows for winter feed.
Cows free ranged on the perennial grass in summer,
always well cared for and treated like part of the family.
I can still remember the day I was raised,
hauled over miles by oxcart from the water powered
lumberyard piece by piece. My birth-date was
chiseled in the corner stone that laid the foundation
for the beams to give me strength for years to come.
My gambrel roof was adorned with lightening rods
made of copper to save me from catching fire.
Over time, the children grew and had children of
their own, and the old folks….were carried home.
I fell apart after that, abandoned for years my
cavernous halls became home to stalactites of spider webs
families of field mice and an occasional raccoon.
Eventually I was taken down and pieces of me were
reclaimed by one of the boys, he turned me into
a coffee table where his daughter sits and writes
poems about me, where I’m happy to continue my wooden legacy.
Sylvia Hutton is an incredibly talented singer and a great friend of Ray’s. Here is a comedy skit with the two of them together called “Makin’ Cookies” from Ray’s 1992 “Amazing Rolling Revue” TV pilot