It stood in the shed behind our cottage,
solid, unbudgeable, iceberg white,
countering every sign of disuse: torn nets,
old handsaws, reels of tangled line.
Empty, it echoed with the vacancy of metal,
with the forlorn redundancy of inner space.
Working, it hummed with a purposeful
churning, gears and ball bearings,
a joyous swish that came to its end
with a groan of sad parting: Its residue –
bubbles of breakable blue.
Shirts, shorts, jeans, and jerseys:
Each fed through the mangle
came out flat and comical –
cartoon coyote pressed by a steamroller.
Long ago it was hauled to the desolate junkyard,
scrap metal iota, dissected for parts,
then crushed and refigured.
Now it returns with the scent of old cedar,
with the fragrance of sheets snapped by wind.
The pure appliance once taken for granted.
Whiteness waiting in the shade of the shed.


Kenneth Sherman's long poem Black River, is forthcoming from Porcupine's Quill. His work has recently appeared in ARC, Grain, AGNI, Partisan Review, and Tikkun. TDR reviewed his book The Well.