Quietness

There's this barn that I always pass any time I travel from my home in North Carolina to visit friends and family on the east coast. There's a little farm in a field beside the highway. It's just lovely :)

As usual, all comments appreciated :)

"Storm Quiet"

You spread yourself like Anansi-spider

across the border between Virginia and North Carolina,

all red and dry—

you ought to be a desert.

Land spirit,

the voice of your tin roof has fallen silent.

Heat storms crackle their lightning earthward,

treacherous and tempting,

but you can’t summon the rains for your fields anymore

and the grass roots

can’t draw the humidity into their whistling stalks—

their sound, too, has stilled

with a brownness beneath a scathing sun.

You wait for one more autumn

and its offering of apples.

When your children finally arrive

red and slippery as foals

you may go down to die

and perhaps the patient pre-storm silence

will break.