American life in poetry

Descriptive poetry depends for its effects in part upon the vividness of details. Here the Virginia poet Claudia Emerson describes the type of old building all of us have seen but may not have stopped to look at carefully – or thoughtfully.

Stable

One rusty horseshoe hangs on a nail

above the door, still losing its luck,

and a work-collar swings, an empty

old noose. The silence waits, wild to be

broken by hoofbeat and heavy

harness slap, will founder but remain;

while, outside, above the stable,

eight, nine, now ten buzzards swing low

in lazy loops, a loose black warp

of patience, bearing the blank sky

like a pall of wind on mourning

wings. But the bones of this place are

long picked clean. Only the hayrake’s

ribs still rise from the rampant grasses.