The Family Barn

The Family Barn

You’re at the red barn, 30 years old, rooting through the old family junk, wanting to keep it all fresh in mind. Bill’s dog, Sam, inhabits that place like a soul in purgatory. He barks when you enter, then flees ahead of you, finally taking refuge upstairs on the outdoor balcony that has no railing. Later he lets you pet his mange-scarred head. Then he goes and lies in the interior dusk on a bunched piece of black polyethylene someone once threw on the floor. You feel too much at home here. Your mind is too much like this barn, a storehouse of beloved personal trash, and you are too much like Sam, reluctant to leave a place you’re unsatisfied in but weirdly comfortable in. But you’re leaving for New York, soon. ~ Journal, Aug. 13, 1986