The blue tin coffee cup steams on the work bench. Work gloves, flecked with motor oil and house paint curl like leaves waiting to be burned. Last week’s Times are piled in strata. The battered radio with the wire hanger antenna collects shards of static. A day to make things whole: the kitchen chair with the missing rung, the porch window’s cracked pane, the old church pew on the workshop floor awaiting the brush and glittering gems of varnish. Silvery canvasses of summer screens lean against the wall breathing like cobwebs. Listen closely: you can hear the train of Sunday coming from a long way off. The air smells like smoke. And as you hang up your jacket, you’ll see that you are a curator in the museum of Saturday, that in your pocket, along with the folding knife and thumbnail sketches of future projects, is the fistful of wood screws like a forgotten exhibit of tiny brass gods.
Richard Hedderman is a multi-Pushcart Prize nominated author of two collections of poetry including most recently, Choosing a Stone (Finishing Line Press). He was a Guest Poet at the Library of Congress, and has performed his writing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His poetry has appeared in dozens of literary publications both in the U.S. and abroad including The Stockholm Review of Literature, Rattle, The American Poetry Review, and the anthology In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press). Formerly Writer-in-Residence at the Milwaukee Public Museum, he is currently the Coordinator of the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. More of his work may be found at richardheddermanpoetry.com.
