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Penelope Schott
OLD BARN,
OR HOW THINGS GO ON
Explore more of Penelope Schott’s work by downloading her new PDF pamphlet
OLD BARN, OR HOW THINGS GO ON available now from O:JA&L’s Buttonhook Press.
The rusted hay press with its wooden sweep arm,
its toggle and pivot, sits out in the field, wrapped
in tumbleweed. Where are those two draft horses
now? Hauled to the glue factory? And the farmer?
There was that day his Ames pitchfork got caught
in the workings. He lost part of a finger and lived
to die of old age. On a bent square-headed nail
in a near-to-collapsing barn, his straw hat waits,
its wide brim nibbled by Clydesdales.
. I suppose
none of this matters. I could get out my cell phone
to respectfully photograph that swaybacked barn
but I don’t. If it falls, as well it may, with the weight
of winter snows, the current pair of barn swallows
or else their feathered descendants will, with luck,
find some safe place to construct their mud nest.
About the writer:
PENELOPE SCAMBLY SCHOTT’s work has been published in Adanna, American Poetry Review, CALYX, Cider Press Review, Connecticut River Review, Evening Street Review, Georgia Review, Gyroscope, Miramar Magazine, Panoply, Passager Journal, Paterson Literary Review, Rat’s Ass Review, The Raven’s Perch, and others. She is a past recipient of the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. The author of twenty poetry books, her most recent include On Dufur Hill (Turning Point Publishers), Sophia and Mister Walter Whitman (The Poetry Box), and Waving Fly Swatters at Angels (Turning Point Publishers). She lives in the small (pop.: 632) wheat-growing town of Dufur, Oregon.
Image: The Old Barn by George Clausen (1852-1944). Oil on canvas. 18.1 x 14.1 inches. Public domain.
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