Today’s Writing Prompt . . . This Old Barn.
Or: If this barn could talk. . .
What do you think this barn was used for? Did you grow up near a barn like this?
Either write what really happened or make something up.
This old barn . . .
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Ke11y
Growing up, it wasn’t unusual for me and some pals to visit those barns in the countryside; the ones that had been standing more than a hundred years, my dad said, to play in the daylight hours, not daring to go at night. Cobwebs, like grotesque mysteries, displayed themselves in the dimly lit corners. The darkness inside, even on a bright and perky day, held a chill in its shadows. We would play in the fingers of light poking through the holes in the roof. We were told never to venture inside. What an invitation! It just seemed, well, exciting and mysterious.
Sixty years later, I still feel a sense of danger going inside the old barn. But then it’s not just the barn, it’s the fields of wheat beside the yellow lanes that turn and buckle and disappear around curves. Come December, the pale days and the falling snow hides the lane, but I know every inch of it by the twigs of life visibly poking through the white sheet of winter.
The barn on the top of the hill still stands like a gravestone against the sky, with cabbage-coloured moss spreading itself between the cracks of its two standing stone walls.
mcullen Post author
I love the lilt of this . . . prose in form, poetic in rhythm. I especially like the lines, “but I know every inch of it by the twigs of life visibly poking through the white sheet of winter.” And “like a gravestone against the sky, with cabbage-coloured moss spreading itself between the cracks of its two standing stone walls.” Twigs of life and gravestone. . . both hopeful and ominous. Brilliant writing!
Ke11y
So kind, Marlene. Thank you.
mcullen Post author
Thank YOU, for sharing your writing on The Write Spot Blog. It’s a pleasure to read your writing, Kelly. It’s like listening in whilst telling stories ’round the hearth.