Burning Barns

It took but a moment
for the barn to burn,
a surrendering to the tiniest of flame
to create a conflagration, cruel, consuming,
until nothing was left but ashes and imperfect memory.

The rebuilding has taken longer.
Years.
A decade,
trying at first to rebuild what was,
until sense replaced nostalgia
and it became not history repeating,
but something entirely new
with dark corners and crannies
and more windows than you ever imagined
before.

About this poem

More autobiographical than about barns – it has been roughly a decade since my divorce. But it can be about barns too.

Tom