The Sand Shed: A Poem

Embryonic years under brick and sheet metal
Kicking stones along concrete slabs
A garden with no grass, walled high
That shed, your shed, filled with sand
In that sand I imagined things that are
Things that were, things that could have been
Beneath my nails I feel it still

Memories bound by gossamer webs
Ones strung from corner to corner
Tea candles forever-aflame in old black lanterns
Shelves filled with relics casting strange shadows
Shadows, shadows of shadows, mercurial time
You're at the door, an orange shine in your eyes
Dinner is ready

Dinner is gone
Dinner is cold, dead and buried
Stan and Ollie, Nana and me
The shed, your shed, our sand
Sand that still falls in the dark
Counting forever down
Tick, tock, tick, tock

And grains I will become

My earliest memories are of playing in Nana’s garden when she would have me down. It was a small concrete affair with three sheds along its high back wall. The left-most shed was where the boiler for the house was. The right-most shed was Granda’s old tool shed. The middle one was hers and it was in that shed where I spent most of my time.

When my visits became more common, she had a sand pit put in; an effort to keep me out of danger. There are times when I can feel the grit under my nails; some trapped memory finding footing in the wrong sense. Hours I’d spend soaking the sand and making burrows, only to scrape away at their inner walls — centimetre by centimetre — to see how much I could take away without them crumbling.

The shed itself was old and, before I was permitted entry, it was cleared of all its potential for mischief. Cobwebs used to hang from the rafters like bunting and in one of its corners were two shelves. There was little of import on those shelves save for a black lantern and a smattering of plates and cups that had no use in the house. I would ask her to buy tea candles so that I could light the lantern as I played — some of my fondest memories.

The end speaks for itself, really. Where she has gone, one day I must go too. There’s a comfort in that, I think. Morbid is certainly one word to describe me!

Auf Wiedersehen.