Maurice Manning

To a Barn With Nothing In It

The freedom to imagine a mule,

or a bony jack, as some would put it,

worn-out and good only for yoking

to colt mules until they learn

the burden must be shared and shall

be borne with knowledge that enters the eyes

in time to sit there behind the eyes

at the back of the long, amused face,

below the long ear’s flick—

that jack—led by its own will,

entered the open door of the barn

one day and stood in the shadows slotted

with light, as a flood of rain scratched

the roof and loose metal banged

in the wind and the barn became a banjo,

and the jack, pleased with the transformation,

became the soul of music itself.

Scarecrow

In my grandmother’s garden once

she let me make the scarecrow,

but the one I wanted to make was too

involved, too life-like, and so

he got reduced to a pair of sticks,

fastened together I recall

by half of a bootlace into a T.

I stabbed him into the stony ground.

He was about my size, but that

was all we had in common.  He stared

into his patch of the world.  The scarecrow

was ahead of me in solitude.

When I wondered why he didn’t have shoes,

she said, a scarecrow don’t have feet,

honey, else-wise, he’d run away

because he’d be scared of himself—

except she said he’d be a-scared,

a smoother line as I hear it now,

and apparently adding another note

to the word made me remember it,

and by the time I finished, the scarecrow

I thought was a man was wearing a dress,

mysteriously, and looked like her

returning from a funeral,

a symbol, something that mattered once,

something I loved and blindly loved.

Long Ago on Teges Creek A Man Got Right With God

Now over here is where they burned

his overalls once they were too

worn out to patch, because I’ve found

a handful of rivets that didn’t burn

and some of them still have Liberty

stamped on the face, but finding one

in the garden spot with Liberty

stamped on it also, tells a different

story, and this one involves the man,

a hot day, a mule, and a plow

that hit a rock, an event which jolted

the man and popped both of the buttons

that clasped the galluses over his shoulders.

He next encountered gravity

and shame, for it being such a scorcher

and this man being a country man,

he’d taken the liberty of refusing

any other article

of clothing save the overalls,

which now were shucked down to his ankles

and he stood there stupefied and just

as naked as the day he was born,

and all of this became the grist

of legend, commonly known as the day

when Old Arkus Hibbard plowed

himself plumb out of his overalls

and thought it was such a tedious story

he’d have to tell it on himself,

else only he and God would know it.