Stories drawn out like a cord. He may speak to the horse of the child's birth in the farmhouse across the field when summer burned, the hot squall of blood blossoming from the mother. How does anyone remember ten fingers uncurling like tendrils, bones lining up in a mute logic, memory as transparent as an onion's skin gathered around the cloven bud, pungent as the brain. I would come too, if only to hear the stories, to be led along a field almost ready for cutting, to smell the barn in the air and know the darkness contained by those boards has been hammered in place for over a hundred years. I'd stay close, lean into a stall, glance toward the loft always there like a future hovering above the floor.
Some places invent a language.
Even light has an odor when it splinters old wood and rust can make a beautiful sunset in the bottom of an old grain bucket.