The Barn ©

The door scrapes into yesterday,
a musty darkness fills its gaping mouth.
I gasp airborne stillness
as sleeping shadows stir
like alien shape-shifters.
Farm tools clatter in the sudden draft,
and lugged sacks neatly stacked,
bulge like overstuffed pigeon crops.

In the roof space, feral bats creak time
with splintered oak beams,
and rust-coated chains
hang through torn hessian.
I turn as daylight blinks at me
through spider-crusted windows.
Suddenly I become the intruder,
I scuttle outside into fresh mud puddles
leaving the ghosts to slumber
in their coffin of shadows.