Our current house does not have a porch. Though we love the house, its absence is always felt, especially by my partner, who does architectural design for a living and threatens every once in a while to slap one on our territorial lime stone/Eastern ex-senator's house.

The idea of a front porch looms large as an idea of Americana--especially among those who grew up in the Midwest or the South (I am from Nebraska; he is from Texas). In my memory, the porch was where we gathered after Sunday dinners at the grandparent's house to watch the neighbors, commenting on gardening and waiting for it to get dark so fireflies would light up the dusk. The Midwest is a place of quiet well-kept lawns and we are proud of them--I'm thinking of the Lowell poem.

The Southern porch, however, is a thing of legend. A place where gossip and drama ocurred all over a cool glass of lemonade. Think of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee's Pulitzer-winning novel. Within the book, the young tomboy, Jean Louise "Scout" Finch, narrates the story of racism and injustice in a small Alabama town--quite a few scenes take place on the porch. When people think about Southern porches, however, the image they often get is of the large wrap around verandahs in Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind.

In my own writing, porches are definitely a place from which to watch the world. I think within the poem that follows, "Porchfront Blues," my main goal was to point out the sort of sheltered security most of us take for granted with our perhaps not 'wealthy,' but comfortable, nonetheless, homes. Also the difference in looking at the world around you as a child, as compared to how it looks now, as an adult.

The poem was published in a couple different journals in Texas, ;). I think they love the one line. Also, most recently in Wolf Moon Press Journal in Maine:

Porch Front Blues

(Omaha, NE)

I can see
Peonies break their crowns
on the sidewalk in summer--
no longer the leonine orbs 
remembered of childhood.

     The city is a tumbleweed
that looks as if it will blow
down river, south, towards 
   Texas.
Even the new green is a ruse,
hiding bits of garbage

and tanned old men who gather 
behind the house to drink vodka
and sleep, wrapped loosely 
in their skins.

     Transients migrate north
in summer.  I have heard them
talk shop on the library steps--
say Nebraska is a nice place to 
be when the weather is good, but
cold as stone in winter.

I have seen them sleeping
free as new released birds
in the library chairs
face east toward the riverfront
windows a sky
made of glass and clouds--
all a part of their vision.

     Today, air blows hot
a bubble of heat
quivering over buildings that 
have stood one-hundred years
painted old men of the prairie
their structures sound,
but wrinkling a little.

I guess it is all just snapshots
we hold for ourselves--
The ideas we have of people 
and places
shut out the rest easily
drive by, drive through
the cracking streets,
so clean through car windows,

plastic bags blowing in the wind--
     new flowers.