Our Barn in Summer: Remembering Portersville

Author's note: I'm in my mid-eighties, and I've just finished writing this collection of poems drawn from my boyhood years. They're not poems about my early life-they're poems from my early life. Each poem arose from a separate journey. I went back, became the boy I once was, then took a snapshot of something happening in that place and time. The place is a small farming and coal mining community in Western Pennsylvania. The time is my boyhood years, 1929?1937 or thereabouts. I'm sending these snapshots to my children and grandchildren. I'm also offering them to you, hoping you'll enjoy them. Robert OliverAugust 2008