sweet
the song of southern tea
a somewhere
heaven found
reaches loving fingers
to the porch
as low the evening
shutters
in swarms of honey bees
as nightbirds
bring their babies
back to home

crickets
raise their fiddles
in perfect melody
beetles crow
a language almost gone
alone as one
cicada
forgotten when to sleep
hovers near a mem’ry
of flight

june bugs
curse beyond my sight
in search of mid july
another world
becomes
of candlelight
the sure embrace of summer
lanterns take to wing
a message passed
to stillness
we both know

learning
sometimes lets me in
for hours
I can’t speak –
as silence lays
in whispers to my skin
dreams are spent
awaking
another hush tonight
as bare the drum
of anxious feet
to board

…

For three years, I’ve searched for a screen door – a gate worthy of keeping my porch.  Seems simple, I know, but not so very.  I didn’t want new, or unused, or unloved.  I wanted warped and scarred, squeaky and rusting, a handle polished by a lifetime of love, of leaving and coming back ’round.

Today I traveled to the area known to me best, hills and dips marking the edges to my first heaven.  A general store with dirt floors, and the ghost of an old register and blue horse writing tablets.  Down the way, an old house taken over by weeds.  But, o……….so much more!  And there, fastened still to falling porch, my door.  She’s been waiting, and I’ve been patient.

Now, well surely the story writes us whole.