The Shed

THE SHED

THE SHED MANIFESTO
No matter how grand his house — shed with icing — or winning his wife — enemy of sheds,
usually — whatever his car, career, position, a man's shed is coagulation, unburdened essence
of himself. It is also the shed itself.
Hard men can weep in sheds, honking and snuffling for half an hour or more before composing
a face to meet the world. The shed understands. Hasn't it always been adjunct, backyard
dweller, cat-smeared, overcoat-infested outcast?
The shed is home to the humble. What dero
drifting under alcoholic stars, wanting
a little warmth, has not dreamed
of stumbling through that dark aperture (for the best
sheds have no doors) to sleep on wheat bags, tarps,
snug in the smell of old dust and kerosene drums?
The first religion — love of children — engendered sheds.
The second — idolatry of speed — ends there
in brittle riding tack and horseshoes hanging from nails,
gaskets, dead batteries, engines dismembered and scattered
and sometimes, in back country where the faith has good duco,
entire cars on blocks, an offering to Shed.
Shed has known love, but doesn't like to talk about it. But will, if its rusted reticence is pressed,
unloose (for sheds experienced in love have doors, and further doors) antique aromas, delicate
bat flutterings, unidentifiable dews, a stew of memories cooling in the dark, tyre-balding interior.
Sometimes it is better not to ask.
PAGE 10
The shed, like the nose, is too obvious for History
but no conquest starts without it. Is it accident
that settlement begins with sheds, breezy First Fleeters
of terra firma, while timid cities follow?
That Christ first breathed in a shed? That Alexander
burst, unbeatable, from good shed-breeding country?
Tyrants are those who have forgotten sheds, or prefer,
like Genghis, to sleep in a tent. May they rot in earth
unblessed by sheds, forever rocking their marble regrets.
The shed does not forget.
When men forget, the shed is subtle reminder.
A man needing a one-eighth drill bit can search the shed
for hours, looking first in likely places — pockets
of mouldy reefer jackets, small-cities
of silverfish in empty alum boxes, a child's shoe
(its owner long a lawyer) waiting to be glued — then
in possible spots — above the beam where washers rot,
for instance, the hollow insides of handlebars, until
despair reducing him to hopeless gestures,
he looks in the drawer marked 'Drill etcetera'
It's there (for a wife, generally, has no feeling for the proper placement of tools). Enraged,
crazed a junk diaspora ensues. Boxes of bolts go flying, blunt scythes attempt shed shortening,
a tail shaft becomes battering ram, the cat a witness, cowering. Exhaustion settles with the dust.
The search for the one-eighth drill bit begins again. A man will look in the shed and find himself.
Shed is freedom, the soul's aquarium where memory eddies and the day stands still.
PAGE 11
Oh ship of cobwebs riding the busy hills,
your intimate cargo sleeping steady, bedded
in sump oil seeping through dust, how can I
praise you enough? How lucky the snake
that slides inside whenever it likes, to feel your flesh
(for the shed has shadows, and the shadows have weight)
brushing against its skin!
The world with its warnings — Stay away from Shed!
The shed eats everything! — grows wearisome.
What can a complex organ feed on, if not
unquenchable life in objects? I tack this list
of virtues to its walls, hammering gently
so the wood won't crack, and step back happy.
Shed approves.
Sheets of roof iron move between their nails. A paint tin pops. Rafters take up their tiny slack.
Shed is murmuring!
The snake, awake and sensing politics, stops to interpret, to squiggle in the dust: Vote One,
SHED

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