The Wood Shed
Ella Boyd

beyond the cross nailed through the doorframe
he kneels, moldy wood piles and damp dirt beneath his heavy feet,
baptises the new day with each stroke of his axe
shell of bark and dream fragments falling away with each raised hand, sharp
cut, no blood,
white mouse disappears between stacks as fast as
it came into the open.

for a minute, he thinks, this is it,
the start of a conversation with God, or something,
the symbol for a new life, or beginning of one,
and he remembers how cold the heavy floors are inside,
so he raises the axe again,
and does not think about the mouse, or God,

just lets the colors of the sunrise pool between the holes
in the fence of the wood shed,
like the pottery glazes of the earth, before
they thin out and dull again. ​