Autumn rust

Click on photos to enlarge.

Don and I found rusted pieces of farm equipment in corners of the barn hanging from nails here and there. Old horseshoes, a gear, hooks of various sizes and shapes.

The purpose is to make a windchime. The JorgDotOrg photo hunt starting tomorrow is "windchime," and we don't have one. So I started brainstorming what I could make one from.

I wrote a poem about it for my poetry group tonight:

Autumn sounds

Small pieces of
rusted farm metal
that once lay nested in corners
or hung on nails
these hundred years

gears and rings,
hooks that look like hairpins
or the number six, discarded
horseshoes, one
with three nails fused in the holes

all
the color of the fallen
leaves softly curled and pinned
beneath them on the deck

where they are
lined up to be assembled
for a new purpose

a windchime

the dong, pling and thrum
that will continue the vibrations
of
the horse’s stomp, the plow’s
jab, the fluid swing
of rope and pulley,
and the clutch and release
of the farmer’s thick fingers
that labored
to his blood’s beat.

- Ruth M.