Working with Details

Crazy green stone, like something still alive, stone pulled out of this earth and cut, then stacked into walls, thick walls, the corners square, the lines straight, laid with great precision. An old serpentine stone barn, generations old. The wood was the weakness. Rotted out of the window frames.  Rot in the door frames. The great doors that let the herd in each morning, each evening, sag now, their edges stuck in the cobblestones of the yard, unmovable, gaping open. Inside, the rusted metal stanchions summoning the ghosts of cows as surely as if they were there. Conjuring up the sweet smell of hay, the soft squirts of milk in a pail, the mew of cats, a rhythm of the past, a rhythm to be trusted. Above, the mow, empty of its load of bales, the floor rotting under the places where the roof now leaks. The wind having it way with the stray wisps of straw and hay on the mow floor, swirling them, swirling them, those left from a time this great fortress of a building was expected to grow old rather than decay.