To Build A Barn
To build a barn you need
Pallets, lots of them.
What do you mean pallets?
I mean pallets, that’s right —
Squared oak, ash, and beech slats
Found around factories, mills,
Trucking outfits, lumberyards.
Grimy, busted, smeared and
Heaped in piled debris, no one
Will argue if you want them.
So Everett’s wife brought a
Few home each day from the
Factory job tossed into the
Pickup truck and Everett
Would unload pallets
Everywhere — behind his house
And mother’s trailer, off to the
Corner pasture — and when
He had twenty he thought to have
Twenty more and when he stockpiled
Nearly two hundred he loaded
Each one onto his hay wagon,
Drove its bounty across the
Road and unloaded it all again
Where he would build his
Barn beside the brook.
You — who buy used barn board
At five dollars a foot and sound
Dry oak or chestnut timber
For post and beam structure
And have this idea that it
All takes money please take note —
Everett’s barn was built with
Pallets, reused dimension and
Chunky hemlock framing milled
From his woodlot, built
In the worse conditions —
On a foundation that already had
One barn burn down mysteriously.
And after a full day’s work
We had the first floor deck
Finished in pallets and it
Snowed all the next day and
The next day after that we
Shoveled off the snow pad,
Went on building — kids and
Relatives handling pallets —
Bucket of all size nails
We dug into all day long.
That was living —
Since then, Everett finally
Gave up and moved away,
While the barn stands up
______________
Bob Arnold
Yokel
Longhouse
2011
