ode to an old farmhouse in the rain
I will find the ax head in your crawl space
and polish its rust.
I will trim the rot from your beams for you.
On hot, close nights at your tilted doorways
I can feel how you have ached for spires
to pierce the flooding sky.
How many storms have thundered your roof,
crashing sheets and loose limbs and torn off leaves?
You waited. Let them rage.
Dark, moisture-buckled floorboards catch my toes
but I forgive nail pops,
wrap jade-speckled pothos around their heads.
For two hundred years
your cedar shakes have watched goldenrod fields,
monarchs who visit only to fly away.
No one asked, but you have odes to herringbone,
tools to fix your plinth.
You tell ghosts until the living listen.
You will creak and groan though men try to sleep.
They will wake afraid
while you dream of transoms. Of rib vaults. Arches.
Silence paints ceilings for you.
Hands have moved your walls through lathe, through plaster.
The mud outside always finds a way in.
You never chose beige flowered wallpaper
or the constant water dragging
strong, stacked rocks from foundation to moss.
If the rain dries up
I will slice painted window frames,
let breeze slide east to west.
I will cry. I will level you.
Liz Ann Young (she/her) lives on a small farm with dogs, cats, chickens, and some humans too, on land originally inhabited by the Haudenosaunee and Susquehannock peoples. She is working towards her PhD at Binghamton University and received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the longstanding poetry editor of Atlas + Alice and her work has been published by Black Heart, Big Muddy, Tinderbox Poetry, and San Pedro RiverReview, among others.