Came across these photos and a poem I wrote after my visit back to my home town in Illinois in 2011. A bittersweet journey.
A barn built to last one hundred years.
Rusty now. But the only farm building left standing.
Everything else is corn fields.
Hay bales still crowd the loft, a place a mystery and a home for kittens.
Everything else is gone. The house, the truck shed, even the pond where Grandma taught me to fish.
We tramp the ground – The back door was here. The pump was here. Remember? Remember?
Children of the farm – we came back to see.
Took photos of each other.
Stole an ear of corn to eat later, cooked in the hotel room microwave.
A farm built to last in the hearts of the grandchildren.
And, where are the pictures?