Remnants

The woodshed. The shingles are worn and warped and some are missing. The door is crooked with rusty hinges. The windows are broken, the glass gone. The floor is part dirt, part cracked and broken concrete. This is a remnant, a piece of a life before I came here. I have walked in and out that door a million times, I think. The remnants of a once new tightly made door. I pile wood in here every fall and all winter I take down the piles and lug them into the house, remnants of trees that grew green and tall in the woodlot. They feed the maw of the stove, merry crackling fires, wisps of smoke, and lastly, ashes. Ashes that I spread as poor mans fertilizer in the Raggedy Garden. Remants of warmth and cooking and flame.

             When I open the door the sun is shining through the remnants of the window, streaking the wood pile with golden light, remnants of  golden fall day. There is not so much wood left in here now, in the remnants of summer. I need to get stacking. But today I stand in that stream of sunshine and look around. The walls are cluttered with the remnants of many years of burning wood. Axes with broken handles, old crosscut saws, oil cans ,black and smeary with years of dripping oil. Old wooden boxes, old tobacco cans full of nails, a rusty shovel with a chipped head, a rake with most of its teeth missing. Lacy spiderwebs grace the corners. A pile of tire chains is heaped on the floor, remnants of old. Does any one use tire chains any more? Sawdust dusts everything. An old chewed up glove sits high up on the pile. I can hear the rustle of a mouse, and a chipmunk peers at me from the doorway. A bee bumbles in the glassless window, a groggy fall bee who flies without rhyme or reason. There is a shelf above the window. It's higher than my head. I stand tippy toe and crane my neck.

           The sign hangs there above tin shovels, tiny oil cans, a tin funnel, coffee cans, an aluminum pot filled with wedges and jugs. A remnant of our family, from long ago. R. Somero. Fancy script. Purposefully serrated edges. Remnants of the chains that it hung all those years before. It hung at a camp in northern Michigan, on the lake. There was a boat and fishing equipment and rustic living accomodations. Boone remembers fondly the time he spent there, mostly with his grandad. Fishing and cooking up their fish and sleeping with the slap, slap of the water against the shore. Remnants of memories, hidden in everyday living. Fragments of the past here in the shadow of the roof where the sun shine never can reach. I'd take it out, hang it for the world to see, still smooth and sturdy, speaking to all and sundry. " Here I  am still, R. Somero. I lived and I died and I left you the remnants. Share them so the chain goes unbroken   and the circle goes round." He likes it hidden there, where only he can find it, and remember....

           Broken window, bringer of light, soon I will pile the wood in front of you , high up where I can barely reach, and no sun will shine in here til winter is past and there are only remnants again.