"Be Ye Separate"
The barn waits just past the house on the gravel drive that continues on to curve around fields and pastures. Set far enough from the main road, the barn walls keep the horses from startling from the few cars that drive through back roads in Lancaster County. It's surprising the way the mind drifts into reminiscence of the mundane. Anything to escape the stifling chokehold of grief that wraps us like a noose. The rest are still inside, groping blindly for comprehension in potato casserole and macaroni salad offered by the congregation like prayers.
The barn air is easier to breathe. Motes of hay dust hang suspended in dim yellow light from kerosene lamps. Delicate wisps of spider webs barely visible in the corners dance in the draft from open barn doors. The night breeze carries the murmur of concerned voices from the house. The distance is enough to blur words that sound like "community" with an undertone of "shun." But the barn is unruffled, a sanctuary of aged red walls raised and painted in one day. The clay underfoot is packed hard, strewn with hay fallen from bales in the loft above. Like little tin soldiers lost at sea. A sudden, uncontrolled jerk of the head, away from the thought.
Hands run over stall partitions pockmarked with little half moons from generations of agitated cows and sheep, coming to rest by a corner seat surrounded by strips of hanging leather. Work to be done, things that always need fixing. Better to mend and oil bridles than sit in the house with women pretending not to cry. Pretending that now was no different than before. No different than the defilement of bringing an olive uniform and plastic black buttons here, into our community that has never seen either and refuses both.
Please comment and tell me if you get it?
The barn air is easier to breathe. Motes of hay dust hang suspended in dim yellow light from kerosene lamps. Delicate wisps of spider webs barely visible in the corners dance in the draft from open barn doors. The night breeze carries the murmur of concerned voices from the house. The distance is enough to blur words that sound like "community" with an undertone of "shun." But the barn is unruffled, a sanctuary of aged red walls raised and painted in one day. The clay underfoot is packed hard, strewn with hay fallen from bales in the loft above. Like little tin soldiers lost at sea. A sudden, uncontrolled jerk of the head, away from the thought.
Hands run over stall partitions pockmarked with little half moons from generations of agitated cows and sheep, coming to rest by a corner seat surrounded by strips of hanging leather. Work to be done, things that always need fixing. Better to mend and oil bridles than sit in the house with women pretending not to cry. Pretending that now was no different than before. No different than the defilement of bringing an olive uniform and plastic black buttons here, into our community that has never seen either and refuses both.
Please comment and tell me if you get it?