The Barn, Union County 

Sometimes when we touch, the ripples break and I return.

It’s a five dollar ride through Charlotte. 

The construction cranes, the orange barrels everywhere,

 “Stop”, “Slow”,“Detour”, and rollin' rivers of red clay, 

vociferousness from a multitude of vacant sites with their

 layers of thick new gravel and the rental fences 

marking the boundaries, keeping us out, 

holding us off  at the edge, dividing us, planting stakes

 in the stones and I know our city is changing

 before our very eyes. And not by design and not by plan 

and not by a desire to be better, to maintain our 

place in distinctive and charming cities growing 

with all the aplomb of professional sports, towering headstones,

 the money lenders, the thriftless who dictate the cracker 

box apartments with the stale, stenciled design that

 pastes layers of the same torrid browns 

and military drab,the lateral stripes of hardi-plank. 

This is not the language of legacy.

So today I went back. 

The air is fresher across the line. The fields are there, yes, green.

 The narrow road that leads to Union County, the backway, 

Old Charlotte Highway was where I needed to be. 

This avenue reminds me we are playing “big city”. 

Because on our fringes, our roots can be seen 

and felt and the country air breathed. I was both happy and sad. 

If you are new here you do not know our fringes. 

Where some of us go to check and make sure there

 are places where homes and barns and trailers,

 and storage sheds, and chicken coops, 

and old tractors and hundreds of pick-up trucks are 

everywhere. I love them. They are heartbeats. The workers

 are here, the farmers, the doers, the mechanics and carpenters,

 the people who are good with this Union County. 

Make me smile. Here’s to Union County!

 I feel better sitting in an old, well worn metal chair on an open porch
under a massive tree with massive limbs
 hanging unabashedly over the home,
the barn and me.