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

HUSHED

In the library the young girl
her mother checking email
sang a little song she was
making in the moment it wasn’t
being sung for her mother
or herself it wasn’t being sung
for anyone around her it was only
being sung for the sake
of being sung her heart and mouth
moving in the movement of the song
and I knew who she was
beyond what I knew she was me
as a child singing to be singing
and I knew that her mother
in the library would stop her
would tell her to be quiet
how could she not but oh
for the singing that seeks
no applause and is ours
even in the silence