It leaned too far and the galvanized roof was mostly sky, good for picture taking, nothing practical. The barn my great-grandfather built in 1862 with his boys and a team of mules, a fine piece of work in its day. Black iron nails he smithed himself, western cedar milled right here on the ranch.
Last summer we pulled it down. Two hours of dozer work. Would have been less if we hadn’t stood around admiring the buck rake, hand forge and anvil, the big round saw blade rusted out like everything else.
dry lightning
a taste of sagebrush
in the wind
We sorted out the best planks, the ones where saw-whip silvered the grain. Even Montana winters don’t eat lumber like that. I set some boards aside for fence mending, stashed the rest in the carriage house rafters till the roof sagged last winter. That’s when we had our family talk about the barn wood.
shelling pecans
on the screened porch
Dad’s 3-day stubble
We decided to make coffins, one for each member of the family. No sense waiting till the last minute. Mom took our measurements, my son Frank ripped out the lumber on his table saw. Naturally, Dad wanted a classic shape, no squared-off casket nonsense, and quality hardware.
Come spring thaw I stacked the four coffins in the tractor shed, unassembled, parts numbered.
soft nicker out back . . .
the appaloosa
too old to ride
Honorable Mention: NPNC Haibun Contest, 2026
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Judges’ comments
In “Thrift”, I appreciate a conjuring of stark beauty in the ordinary:“the galvanized roof was mostly sky”, and the poetry of worn objects that evoke a world of work and time-bound expertise:” black iron nails he smithed himself…”, “admiring the buck rake, hand forge and anvil…”. Against the quotidian of the ramshackle barn, the visual-tactile texture of “we sorted out the best planks, the ones where saw-whip silvered the grain…” shines.
The three haiku work to heighten the narrative movement, deepen the characterization of the “father”, and draw in the sense of generations. Likewise, they bring in new sensory elements of taste “the taste of sagebrush/ on the wind”, and sound:
“soft nicker out back…
the appaloosa
too old to ride”
Most movingly, the haibun translates the Japanese sense of impermanence into an only too real portrait of the economic collapse of family farming and ranching in the U.S.. One of the greatest strengths of this piece is this grounding in “place”: “western cedar milled right here”. Here, place is not just a “setting”, but a character in itself.
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