Runes in the Rafters

Intro

Barn roof groans like a hymn nobody wrote

Grandfather's chisel still living in the beam

Some men left letters, some men left a debt

I found his numbers cut where the swallows nest

Verse

Granary beams stacked black from the smoke of oh-nine

Grandfather marked the wood with a blade, no chalk line

Drought year got a slash, flood year got a cross

Buried two sons in that dirt, carved the cost

Wheat came in thin but the ledger stayed thick

Carved through the winter till his fingers went numb quick

Bank man came sniffing, said the land wasn't worth much

Grandfather said the rafters hold more than a clutch

of a signature — said paper burns, timber don't

Said a mark cut deep is a mark that won't

fade like ink in the rain, fade like a name in a claim

He kept the barn standing through the fire and the shame

Neighbors lost their plots to the auction block cold

Our beams still holding weight, still holding gold

Not the kind you spend, the kind you pass down

Runes in the rafters wearing a crown

Chorus

Runes in the rafters, that's the will I trust

Wood remembers weight long after we turn to dust

Every mark's a harvest, every beam's a bone

Long as the barn stands, we ain't ever alone

Verse

Now I'm stacking pallets in a yard that never sleeps

Same kind of counting, different kind of wheat

Forklift growl instead of thresher's hum

Same old god of numb