PORCH

In this small place that I call my home, I’m still able to open a door and walk
into a screened-in room that looks out over trees and a bit of yard. There I can carry a cup of coffee or something stronger and sit for a moment in a transitional space, between inside and outside. When the weather is right, a slight breeze becomes icing on the cake, a delightful, transcendental bonus.

The steady rise of our automobile culture chased away front porches, which naturally invite neighborly conversation, gossip, glances, snooping, awareness.
The rear screened-in porch is an extension of the home into the outside but not necessarily into the neighborhood - in the sense of belonging.

Still, it’s a wonderful refuge (when the weather isn’t as hellish as it was the summer of 2010). Sitting in the porch late at night the darkness becomes an ocean in which we float, our eyes gradually adjusting to the expanding swell of a different, nearly monochromatic world. The songs of insects washes over everything, interrupted by the occasional siren or the hum of distant traffic.

In the morning this porch is the welcome face of a new day.

Until the cold settles in.