Shed

[Billy]

Shed

Going in and not coming out.
A lost country with no language, no culture.
The rules are made up.

You got to have rules so everybody
can find out who they are.

The one window is covered by a black tarp.
In the corners, where the cold air
barges in, are rat droppings.

In the far corner of the ceiling
where no one can reach
is a spider and its babies
still wrapped in silk.

If you sit on the floor
you get splinters in your bottom
and will probably catch your
death of pneumonia.

This is your self-imposed exile.
This is where the big branch cutters
and the long-handled scythe
with rusty teeth are kept,

and the shovel and the sledge hammer
propped against the wall, and lengths
of hemp rope hanging from a rafter.

You should be scared.
There are rules, and no one but you
standing on an upside down bucket.

[Kenneth2816]

Stark. This is not about solitude, it is about being lost and seeking some form of shelter and comfort . The hemp and rafters maybe give us a hint of the desperate mind set of the narrator.

There are so many rules, one cannot keep them all.

This works because narrator was not banished there but is there by self imposition.

There is nothing I would change. Good poem

[BobBradshaw]

I agree with everything Kenneth said. Excellent poem....the descriptions put you right there in the shed.

[Billy]

Thanks Kenneth, Bob