The shed was an apex all-wood

home-built construction,

erected that furnace of a summer

when we burnt in the shade

and our feet turned to leather,

a backdrop of screaming swifts

swooping like mad dot banshees

in the forget me not blue.

 

We stood back and admired

the woody quality of its sturdiness,

overlooked the imperfections;

worth the blisters and swearing,

the seed drawers labelled,

garden tools hanging in place,

as we toasted our cleverness

and soaked in the homebrew.

 

Beginnings then followed:

new this, new that, till the shed

became part of the scenery

and the expert moved in,

ostensibly preoccupied en route,

unnoticed, overwintering in a crack,

casing the joint for suitability

tasting the wood like a connoisseur.

 

Then as we prepared for the year,

quietly, purposefully, she graced our space,

moved in, gnawed, chewed, sculpted,

moistly applying the axioms of Euclid,

compound eye, to mandible, to shed,

constructing a near spherical beauty

while laying dynastic foundations

we felt privileged to observe.