A Night In The Old Barn Poem by Gordon R Menzies

you were a little boy, the night
we slept in my uncles barn while
the ratty farm cats crept about us
jumping with fleas and hungry
hunting the grey mice moving below
alert to our presence and cautious
the sweet smell of straw drifting
over us on a cool summer night
and overhead the pigeons cooing
soft feathered poetry, endless
starlight framed in barn board
spilling in across your face
drawn from the far Milky Way
soft summer breeze moving up
packed earth country road
with the ghosts of fallen cousins
wayward and wandering
in the glimmering starlight
the sleek barn swallows dream
in their dry muddy beds
hidden kittens cry for their mothers
and you move in your sleep
there in the sweet soft hay
wondering where your own has gone