The ShedAuthor(s): Maurice HarmonSource: The Irish Review (1986-), No. 10, Dublin/Europe/Dublin (Spring, 1991), pp. 110-111Published by: Cork University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29735596 .

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110 IRISH REVIEW

The Shed

MAURICE HARMON

A bicycle-frame sideways from a four-inch nail, a rusty chain slung from the handlebars.

Above an old wheel turned to rust, a tube went gray. Bunches of onions and scallions beneath the roof.

Far from the house, a garden shed, feed store

for the hens and pigs, a lumber room, on one side

barrels of bran, oats, flour, on the other

an old bench with solid legs, its wide top hacked and gouged.

At the back jamjars, blackened tins filled with nails, nuts, bolts, hinges. He kept tools there, rake, shovel,

spade, saw, the cross-cut, the wheelbarrow, a deck-chair

with torn canvas and crippled legs pinned behind the door.

He mended punctures, turned the bicycle upside down, removed the tyre, forks and spoons bent into use,

carefully eased the tube below the basin's water-line,

tiny bubbles yielding secret apertures, the match box

cleaned the spot, glue applied, the patch cut and stuck.

If all went well, the tube replaced, pumped, the tyre

plopped in its bed of cloth, the bicycle bounced like a ball, ready again to take him anywhere.

Sometimes he bought leather and a pennorth of nails,

wedged the last onto the bench, ripped away the old sole, rasping, the ugly, twisted ends exposed, cast to the floor, the new piece hammered into place,

then pared and shaved. A mouthful of nails,

quick hammer strokes, hand and thumb adjusting, the gleaming hobnails rimmed the shining sole, as good as new, ready again to echo along the sea-road.

At times a reading-room. The newspaper spread across the bench, the racing page, runners at Newmarket,

Fairyhouse, Baldoyle, marked with stubby puce,

wetted, lip blued, the form noted, the sire admired,

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POETRY 111

Jockeys judged, trainers weighed, the odds remarked, a shilling each way, maybe a double fancied.

On Grand National the outsider almost always also ran.

The morning passed just thinking what might chance.

From there he plotted lines of growth, the garden

mapped inside his head, spuds here, there the runner-beans.

Rows for lettuce, parsnips, turnip, peas emerged in order from this casual multi-purpose shed.

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