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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

WHEN THE BARN BURNED

We drove to watch. We had moved
away when I was seven, the year
before. I had seen mighty men fill
its mow with hay pitch-forked from
wagons. Lodgers lodged there:
pigs, steers. Sheep too, one the buck
that knocked me down or so I was told.
Pigeons chortled from rafters. Rats ran
rampant, one across my shoe once:
I screamed. Oats, wheat, corn sequestered
in burlap stood in rows. Wagons rested
from rollings. I had climbed the barn's
straw bale mountains, had peed in corners.

I stood watching the flames oranging
the night, burning all of it away. All of it.

I was eight.
I was wrong.

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