The song heard in the barn
After Șomartin — Exile in Sibiu
I Have Found Me a Home
In shadowed valleys where mountains cradle forgotten hamlets like secrets in stone
Few reasons to leave A peace finally tasted Sweet on the tongue like late-summer fruit
A wanderer paused on a dirt path laced with autumn’s slow gold.
He had roamed long years — through northern ice that bit the bone, northern forests whispering old names, vast prairie winds that carried riddles without answer. Boots scarred by storm carried him still, heart cracked wide by questions that left only silence wider.
One dusk, fog curling soft as breath from the hills, he slipped into a crumbling barn — beams etched deep by centuries of rain and quiet endurance. A dusty radio waited on a shelf, wired to the faint pulse of solar breath. He turned the dial.
Crackle, then melody — Jimmy Buffett’s voice rising warm as hidden rum: The days drift by, they don’t have names… And none of the streets here look the same…
He stood still, pulse drumming slow thunder. The song drifted on — quiet places, smiling eyes matching smiling faces. It named the ghost he carried: blur of far cities, endless loops of road.
He had mended soil with patient hands, danced beneath sun’s fierce eye, gathered broken pieces of self into something almost whole. Home was no address — only the deep hum where body, feeling, thought fell into earth’s unhurried rhythm.
Outside, he swung onto the old red bike — frame rusted, tires patched with thorns’ sharp memory — and rolled through lanes heavy with plum, past low-beamed bars where voices shared firewater and stories, down to river edges shining like scattered coins.
Seasons turned, slow and sure. Winters glowed by masonry stove’s steady heart, soft humming while bread rose warm and fragrant, hands finding each other under vast night skies, laughter over first brews bright as new sparks, soil opening dark and generous beneath shared labor. Eyes in the market smiled true, streamside silences rang with children’s wild, free-winged joy.
Here — home. And yet… not here.
One frost-bitten dawn the shadow stirred — intangible as dream’s last fading thread, rising from realms half-erased like smoke from long-dead fires, thick with wordless claims, barriers felt but never seen, the anima’s dark twin turning, the persona’s unfinished mask tightening. It swelled from old fractures — mechanical skies grinding distant, webs of duty and distance pulling taut, the collective wound whispering adjustment before depth could truly root.
It wrapped cold around the chest, drew him outward on iron tracks into lit concrete where stars vanished and quiet fled like startled birds.
Exile sharpened memory to a bright edge: stove’s glow dimmer now, soil waiting patient, river holding heavier silences. Tears ran quiet rivers — hot on cold glass, blurring the world until warmth’s outline lingered like archetype in fog, proof the golden thread held though stretched near breaking.
Changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes… the inner refrain, bending graceful to the fall, tasting good times sharp as plum, riches plain as nameless days, rough edges met with steady, open breath.
He moved on, patient as root through granite — letters crossing distance like small brave birds, small acts threading back against the shadow’s slow weight. The call burned clear and constant, that quiet presence the hidden fire guiding homeward through the long dark.
Peace waited, breathing in dark soil, defiant, unchanged — home found, not yet home, already home.
Tears settled into ember-glow, heart sunk deeper in the earth’s unspoken song — heard at last, held fierce, forever arriving.
Mitakuye Oyasin.