Two Poems
by Stephen Barile
ABANDONED FARMHOUSE
The abandoned farmhouse down the road
suffered a similar fate as the orchard,
Trees torn out, stacked and burned.
Now, all that is left,
The tiny shell of a packing-shed.
A large custom ranch-style home
A blackened frame of the roof
From a fire on Christmas day,
A house that was never finished.
Overgrown trees obscure the old house
Behind the incomplete, charred dwelling.
Shrubs, vines and spindly cactus
Covered the entire back porch.
The backdoor was gone completely,
As if severed in a fitful rage.
By the light of a tiny flashlight
That hangs from a key-ring,
I recognize dark corners of a dream.
Shining the light no further
Than from the porch,
I saw through the dim opening.
The place was ransacked,
But for a cardboard suitcase
On the linoleum floor.
Through the ruined kitchen,
Into the shadowy living room,
A red vinyl reclining chair
Opposite the north wall
As if for watching television.
A chair that once belonged
To the woman who wore men’s overalls,
Was often mistaken for a farmworker,
Ostracized and treated poorly
In school and in her lifetime beyond.
Beside the recliner, another chair
For the son who died, her henchman.
On that damp, overcast December night
Animals were scurrying about
Inside the abandoned farmhouse.
I fled by way of the backyard
Into the dark winter night.
Angry wasps were invading my dream.
OCTOBER RAIN
The wind blows from the south
And rain usually follows.
In the first week of October
Temperatures begin to fall.
Hot afternoons in late September
Foreshadow grapes for raisins
In the auspicious vineyard row,
Comes from baking in the sun.
The harvest, cut emerald bunches
Of Thompson seedless grapes,
Lying them down on paper trays
To dry in the daylight hours.
Work started on Labor Day.
At the most vulnerable moment
Of exposure, October rains arrive,
Always around County Fair time.
Before slow-drying is finished,
That miraculous transformation.
The entire eighty-acre vineyard
That took three long days to cut
And finish, and ten farmworkers
We paid better than going-rate.
After a few days of sun-drying,
The wind changed its direction,
Darker clouds began to gather.
If rain persisted for too long
The entire crop could be lost,
A years’ worth of labor gone.
Workers came, rolled the trays
Into neat and tight bundles,
Keeping the crop dry for more
Sunlight to finish the drying.
When the rain came for a day,
Hope for a crop less uncertain.
We gathered up all the bindles
After the rain and then the sun,
With a vineyard trailer and bins
Pulled by the Massey tractor.
Too much rain and we could not
Get the tractor into the field.
Photo by Bianca Hammond
BIO: Stephen Barile is an award-winning poet from Fresno, California, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. He attended Fresno City College, Fresno Pacific University, and California State University, Fresno. His poems have been anthologized, and published in numerous journals, both in print and on-line. He taught writing at Madera College, and CSU Fresno.