The Night Of The Woodshed { The 50 Year Haunting } Poem by Frank James Ryan Jr...fjr

Beneath the floor of the woodshed,
that terrified a towns folk,
the shed they labeled Macabre,
from their fear of its strange, dark story,
one stormy night in sixty-six,
that resulted in ne're a soul
be within a long square mile
of its standing...to this day,
on nights when the sky opens,
pounding the roof with torrents,
of rain that runs down the shed
in colors of rust and umber,
like the night when a metal bird,
lost its path and wings
somewhere inside a cloud,
allegedly billowing-
from a blinding surge of bird strike,
barreling through the blackness
of the storm eye o'er the shed,
and that took all thirty tons
on a sky-born Nantucket sleigh ride,
falling into the hard slate roof
with a crash heard for kilos,
and assumed the pilot dead,
when an alleged eyewitness reported-
they had seen the anti-Christ!

And, tho' fifty years have passed,
every scrap of metal found,
from that gaunt, haunting night
when a man fell from a cloud,
yet to this day, no body found,
nor the ever crucial black box
that has kept this Town in limbo,
and, nothing shy of mere folk lore.

Towns folk still talk at gatherings,
haunting tales now told by offspring,
tales tall as New York scrapers,
scenarios of angels and witchery,
such witchery that keeps folks away,
from warped chimes of a church bell
swinging on the throes of the wind,
or the scratching of human nails
beneath the woodshed floor,
always during a midnight storm,
a maddening sound in true,
over and over again,
yet it still stands as if-
it were June of sixty-six.


Someday, the woodshed will perish,
its death will come by storm,
imploded and swept away-
before the eyes night see dawn,
and will die-
with a hundred-thousand queries still alive.



From' The Death of Classic Poetry''
© MMXVI-All rights reserved
- Frank James Ryan Jr. / FjR