(Mifflin County, PA, 2021, 1992)
Along Tea Run between Milroy and Reedsville
a barn is burning.
That Saturday night in March, a volunteer fireman
bought five bucks of diesel, splashed the forebay painted for Biden
and Harris, struck a match, and someone called 911 shouting a barn is burning.
On a Saturday night in March twenty-nine years before, Darvin Ray
and his girl drove from Allensville to Milroy, in and out of farm lanes
with a propane torch as folks woke up to smoke
and shouts in their own tongue: the barn is burning!
Samuel Moses Yoder, near King’s Hollow, lost eleven Belgian horses,
31 cattle and nine hogs. Samuel Isaac Yoder, near Plum Bottom, lost seven horses,
37 cattle, plows, harrows, a reaper, and buggies. The barn owned by Samuel Christ Yoder,
son of Christ Yoder, sits so close to his parents’ barn that the firemen called
to that farm managed to save Samuel’s barn from burning.
Christ R. Yoder along Coffee Run lost 25 cows and 25 rabbits as men doused
the house. A barking dog woke Michael Hostetler’s daughter who ran out,
barefoot, to see red tail lights down the lane, and her father rescued two cows and four horses,
but couldn’t save three horses and four heifers. Esle Hostetler lost three buggies, ten horses,
21 cows, but pulled a horse, a bull, and ten cows from the flames. Isaac S. Yoder,
near Church Lane, lost seven horses, 33 cows, and three buggies as his barn was burning.
GoFundMe doubled the goal set to rebuild the Biden barn.
Almost 30 years ago cards, cash, horse-drawn implements, livestock
arrived from as far away as Texas; bulldozers showed up to bury beloved
reeking beasts, food came for crews who knew how to clean up,
plane logs, re-construct mortise and tenon. Thank yous in neat cursive
returned some donations in the end, it was so much. But now, who can fathom
charred kangaroos, or last summer out West: 17,000 structures burning?
At trial, Darvin Ray said he had no idea why he lit all those barns.
His dad had served three months for arson, and two other suspects
had firebugs in the family, too; funds slipped into the farmers’ bank accounts
long ago erased the charges. Nowadays, is it really so strange
to find ourselves choked by the smoke of our own making,
never mind all the creatures we’ve lost and keep losing?
Oh, have you ever seen that unearthly beauty
when a dark sky ignites, and a big barn is burning?
After Mark Doty
This poem first appeared in Pleiades 44.1 (2024).
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Julia Spicher Kasdorf has published five collections of poetry, most recently As Is, from the Pitt Poetry Series in 2023. A collection of her essays, The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life (Johns Hopkins, 2001), received the Book of the Year Award from the Conference on Christianity and Literature and was reprinted by Penn State Press in 2009. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, and support from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and PA Humanities. A Liberal Arts Professor of English, Kasdorf directs the Creative Writing Program at Penn State and teaches in the Summer Community of Writers of Chatham University’s MFA Program.
