Cleaning Out the Barn
by Dennis Hansen

This is Michael Carey for Voices from the Prairie a weekly sampling from the rich soil of Iowa’s literary tradition. Today’s writer is Dennis Hansen from Emmetsburg. Dennis doesn’t have any books out that this host knows of, nor any publications that this host knows of save in Voices on the Landscape the anthology of Iowa poetry he edited for the state’s sesquicentennial in 1996. Dennis is not a professional poet, but a quiet and rather shy farmer in the country near Emmetsburg. It seems evident from the work he submitted, that he is honest, plainspoken, down to earth and for the most part self-taught in the poetic arts. Yet, his work is not without beauty and subtly and at times raw power. In this quiet little poem about the simple act of cleaning out a barn, Mr. Hansen’s mind is obviously running on about some new political crisis that the news, and therefore we citizens, tend to obsess on. He chose wisely, not to mention which political party was at the root of the disturbance in his mind at the time, or which particular deed. That would have dated the piece and maybe lost half the audience. No, in the end, the poem is not about politics at all really but how sometimes the daily exertions of hard, repetitions manual labor helps to clear the mind, and become for one’s soul a sort of meditation. What the animals have left on the barn floor, is what politics and the frenzy of the frenetic media often drops willy-nilly into our lives. This poem in its honesty and simplicity has a quieting and comforting effect that is hard to ignore.

Cleaning Out the Barn

I bend to clean out the barn
and its accumulations of health.
The breezes augur well,
blowing out the window.
The heft in the pitchfork handle
gives me strength, and in the weighed
and balanced routine I find my pace,
lose track of time, achieve automatic, heedless
even of the proceedings of the legislators
coming from the dusty radio.
Too many rats in a box
form governments, acquire ideologies.
Forkful by forkful, I rid myself
of this present mess,
down to the clean cement,
mind full only of hope,
and spreading the clean sheets of straw.

"Cleaning Out the Barn" by Dennis Hansen originally published in Voices on the Landscape by Loess Hills Books.
For Voices from the Prairie and Humanities Iowa, this is Michael Carey hoping you continue to hear the music blooming all around you.

Biography

Dennis Hansen is a native of northwest Iowa were he still lives,farms and studies love near the town of Emmetsburg.

BACK