Enjoying This Season
by Gail Denham

My steel chimes are tangled. “Teach them the rumba
while you’re out there,” husband hollers when I ask
for help. Aging has tricks it plays on ears, joints, energy.
Gentle music begins in our immature aspens. They practice
to be grown up, especially in the fall when their elders
rattle heavenly songs, while we applaud all their colors
with the respect they deserve.

Pesky yellow jackets stick noses into everything,
threaten when you sear meat on BBQ, their days numbered.
Autumn silently steals into breezes and begins its massive
tree painting. Even old barns enter fall’s celebration revealing
their years spent sheltering cows, chickens in the loft, stray cats,
and an occasional child with book in hand, an afternoon’s
solitude in mind. Winter’s supply of hay piles high.

Age does well by old barns. They weather storms,
mice invasions, horses who chew stall doors, and boys
standing in the loft door, resolute and daring, ready to jump
into hay mows, hoping the right person sees them.
When winter snows blow through cracks between
time-worn boards, barns sway a little, suck energy
from rafters and memories. They creak, allow icy drifts
to form walls against their sides, believing spring
will arrive in time, as it always has.






 

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