30 DAYS WILD : DAY FOUR. A POEM. THE GENERATOR

THE GENERATOR

There is something really rather wonderful in the woodshed.

Sunlight shafts and the scent of wood,

A cider press

And flakes of bark that have been gathered into sacks

And stored 'till we need kindling for next winter's fires.

There are galleon windows in the woodshed,

Stacked, opaque, leaded and bowed 

To the shape of the side of a ship;

Saved from a time when many were found

But the stained glass ones were sold.

Swallows nest in the woodshed;

Swooping in to stop in the beams

For only the tiniest part of a second,

Then sweeping back out.

With a slurring, flurring beat of the wings

They pass the machine that lives on a stand

Of brick and cement

Hidden behind the woodshed door.

The generator; that is the truly wonderful thing in the woodshed.

Not very large, about the size of a bed,

Green.

It rests through the day, self contained,

Crouched in the way a cow lies in grass

Patiently waiting for night.

Then, when the flight of swallows is losing its frantic pace

And the blackbird is losing some of its sorrow

And the slugs and the snails are preparing themselves

For their night-time assault on the cabbages,

Then, only then, does the generator come into its own

In the woodshed.

For then it supplies us with light,

Gradually building its rip-roaring power,

Sending a strengthening life through the wire

So the light comes on slowly,

Glowly, first very lowly,

Imperceptibly reaching the moment

When all is bright

And the courtyard is filled with the comforting roar

Of the generator

That lives in the wonderful woodshed

Behind the woodshed door.

30 DAYS WILD
Today's Random Act of
Wildness is to post a poem.

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