From one perspective,
a rocker and a swing shift.
From another, stillness
uncovered. A cameo in the movie
about circadian rhythms, how bodies
are meant to move, to rest. The tableau
takes me back: We knew no one
with a screened lanai. Wraparound,
a past and a future wide open.
And the air: pine on the wind,
a sacred scent, like petrichor
or wreaths we hung on our front doors
at Christmas, full of the season—
Hope was coming. Now, as then,
I breathe it in.
Listen: there will always be gossip.
Your name, mine, the neighbor’s,
the soul whose obit noted he was happiest
in nature: casting lures from a kayak
in Cedar Key, gardening, or sitting
on his front porch swing—
a thing we relate to, even as we wonder
when our time will come.
***
A good porch moves us to prepare a house
within, to weather the sins
of a broken world.
Listen: we are all a blend of stories
handed down by prophets, palm
readers, poets. We absorb Isaiah’s prophesies
in theory, miracles like Peter and John
healing a lame man on Solomon’s porch.
Between belief and qualm, we glide,
until the rising and the falling light
recalls our lost beloveds, and we weep
at them waving, waiting for us
on the near or the far horizon.
Or is it the ancient live oak trees we see?
We step from the portico into a field
of endless sow and reap.
Step out of time.
Listen: Hope is coming.
