“Change of Plans” from The Safety of Edges

CHANGE OF PLANS

My father and his father
built a shed by our house
its roof at an angle complete
with an attic its own little door
a square with an X

they’d almost finished it
when the county came by
to say the new building
couldn’t be where they built it
though no one in the office
had said it to my father
when he went there
two weeks before

but Grandpa was undaunted
and they set it on some pipes
rolling it with our neighbors
to the corner of the yard

where already someone else
had cut down the hedge
to make room for the shed
the great ship with barn doors
sailing the back yard the narrow
green sea then

coming to rest
in the newly cleared clearing
no longer at home at the edge
of our house but at least
still standing still a shed
in our yard

                     where it stands
to this day though we moved
somewhere else and no one there
now knows the story