Porch...

I just had a flashback to the grey front porch of my childhood. I remember that even in the heat and humidity of the summertime I would always get a cool temperature from the wooden boards. I miss the feeling of paint chipping under my feet. I miss the smell of my mother’s well-tended garden. I never took it for granted, but I did not realize until now that I used to step out on that porch and inhale the deepest of breathes each time I’d leave the house, it was a certain comfort. There was an unmistakable likeness between everything and myself that made up the porch experience. I had a friendship with each object and each color. Each detail on the outside of my front yard was burnt into my soul. If I close my eyes right now I know exactly where my mind would take me.

There’s never enough rain, grass, or green here. The memories of “home” are not quite haunting, but a friendly reminder that it’s still there. You could consider this is a poetic continuation of my previous post. There's no porch here. Each place I've lived and learned to love had a porch or a wooden deck. Maybe it's the extension of nature's gift under my feet that creates such a personal connection. Provided by the earth and mixed with the care and design of human curiosity, that simple architecture softens me.

Someday I will have a porch again. A porch with a swing, the swing will be a necessity. Just beyond the boundaries of it's shape I'll make sure to have plenty of flowers and bleeding hearts to remind me of how much mine does. I'm taken away. Taken back to something more simplistic than my mind is able to create on it's own. Perch me in a chair, a rocking chair, with a slight breeze and the song of a spring bird. This is where my bones will rest.