- The Shelter of a Country Barn -

John Herlihy

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The shelter from harsh winter of a country barn,

A suitable setting for the telling of this unlikely yarn.

A wooden structure built for strength in early years,

Creaking wood in darkness stirred the horses’ fears.

In crackling snow, footsteps of idle wanderers heard,

Lost and adrift amid the echoes of a feathered winter bird.

The three vagabonds knew each other among the hours,

Bonded by the wilderness to feel friendship in its powers.

They had been wandering long hours in the length of day.

Now as evening fell hard, they searched for a place to stay.

They passed quietly through the broken fencing into the yard.

The night was bitter cold, overhead the roofless night starred.

They were lank and gaunt under the constellations of stars,

To shine as witches’ signatures in the dark space beyond Mars.

Moving under their hats like fugitives on some grander scale;

The stars above and the moonlit snow below, read as braille.

As inner night called, they escaped the moon-blanched waste;

With caution in their plan, they advanced with no undue haste.

Like beings whose very purpose renders them somehow slimmer;

Like beings so charged with meaning that their forms are dimmer.

Who are these three, roaming winter plains of an earlier time,

Troubled men who know evil lurks in shadows that hold no rhyme.

In the vast expanse of wilderness, nothing can claim preference;

Neither spider, stone, nor blade of grass can offer any precedence.

One of the men opened a rough wooden door of the barn shed.

The barn held a mare with suckling colt, from winter wind fled.

Another of the three touched the mare, a whispered word in its ear.

He wished to allow for their presence and ease the mare’s fear.

They carried stacks of straw for bedding from various stalls.

They pulled woolen blankets from knapsacks set by the walls.

One of them found a lantern they lit as they fixed the bedding.

The barn smelled of straw, manure, yellow lamplight spreading.

Shutting the barn door evoked closing down of the world outside;

Their hearts began to settle down and their sense of self felt pride.

The mare sniffed uneasily and the young colt stepped up to stare;

The silence matched the darkness, the breathing seemed as prayer.

Then, one by one, three comrades began to divest of their garments;

Each longed for well-earned sleep and none need make comments.

They yawned, stretched out their arms and then stroked their chests;

They lifted off their hide slickers and their raw wool serapes and vests.

The woolen serapes and their sweaters aroused a crackling of sparks;

They smiled at the thought of fireflies who leave behind luminous marks.

Each of the men seemed to be wearing a sacred shroud of pale fire;

Their arms aloft pulling their clothes as if reaching for a church spire.

Each of these unique souls was enveloped in audible shapes of light;

The mare and the colt looked over alarmed at this unexpected sight.

The little horse turned and hid his face in the web of his dam’s flank;

These once endarkened beings now luminous as the darkness sank.

Ah yes, the mare continued to watch, out there past men’s knowing,

Where the darkness is now illuminated by those distant stars glowing.

The three men had escaped the darkness to fall into a far deeper place,

Where galaxies ferry infinite mystery through the black, universal space.

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(c) John Herlihy December 2018