Shana Ross
Red Barns
There was a time before paint.
Oil and iron mixed will shield
Wood from weather.
Iron on its own was strength at too high a price;
Oil worked tenderly into thirsty planks
Lent vulnerability and endurance but
No protection. No one thing withstands
Time, sun, wind but in combination –
Barns turn red, blood dries black,
Best to rust in layer after layer
We paint them now, and it looks
The same but nothing is
Built with the same conviction
That we will pass these on to our children.
Gardens are planted by people who have faith in the future
But there are those who bank on seeding
Their own harvest and harvesters and would rather salt the earth
Than feed an unimaginable future
I woke up one morning in Ohio farmland and the fog
Was too thick to see the driveway, much less the road;
Where do you come from, to feel like this in the face of the uncanny?
I don’t understand you,
The fear lodged in you like shrapnel
Working its way ever closer to your heart.
In the time before barns themselves
Old men planted trees
Not to shape the future but to repay the past.
Shana Ross is a poet and playwright with a BA and MBA from Yale University. Her writing career has been dormant for 18 years for reasons both practical and best discussed in therapy. This decade, her work has been published in Anapest Journal, SHANTIH Journal, and Writers Resist.
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