Voices heard in the tin shed

 The Day After Memorial Day was devoted to cleaning out the tin shed while searching for a cover for the Wise Woman’s car. The cover, last seen in Texas, was found.

Throughout the day I heard two voices.

First, the Wise Woman’s. She recently saw an Eastern brown snake on the trail at Yellow River and was sure the shed was infested. She invested in snake repellant, which the lower-ranking member of the partnership dutifully applied.

The other voice was that of the poet Ted Kooser, whose remarks about cleaning sheds have stuck with me. Kooser said sheds have a mysterious capacity to accumulate, then to encrust, and so become beyond cleaning. That’s why we clean sheds.

A day cleaning a shed should be a day lost to literature. But that was not entirely so. That’s why I read writers like Kooser.

• Source: Ted Kooser, Local Wonders; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002, p. 8. While Kooser is known as a poet, this book is a collection of essays. I’ve mentioned it before: See “A magnificent book tells what home is like,” Jan. 2, 2023.