The Back Porch

Three years ago this month, I started this blog. I started writing. I started getting stuff out of my head. This has been my veritable back yard. In this space I do all those things relegated to your back yard. It is backyard cooking and eating. Pictures of all the cooking and eating. It is back yard gardening and all the flowers and even some of the creatures that I attend to or cultivate. This is also the back porch, the space you sit and muse. I don’t fume in this space. I don’t rant or pace. Back porches are for swings and hammocks and lazy metal gliders. This is a place for porch sleeping and daydreaming. It is a space to sip a first morning coffee and watch the birds wake and the sun rise. It is also a place to watch the thunderhead roll in and the rain to beat down, the mist of the rain blown onto the porch and speckling your feet. It is the place for fat cats to sleep like turds or prowl after lizards or ground hovering birds. Back porches are where you dawdle with a book and a tall glass of lemonade. It is the place with a back stoop you can sit on and watch the full moon rise in the eastern night sky, illuminating the entire back yard. It is the space you ponder upon the time that has past and the days ahead. The porch doesn’t change much but the view changes. Trees blow down. Grass grows too high or the gardens run wild. And all the time, you think about the beauty and the wonder of it all. You think about it from your back porch.

Realisa is my back porch. It will be my back porch until I have a back porch. Even after I have a back porch, I will likely sit outside and listen to the cicadas or the the frogs and ponder over my very good fortune, the times of adversity and the path upon which I walked to finally arrive at my very own genuine back porch. It is a real place. My place.

2 thoughts on “The Back Porch”

  1. The one thing you didn’t mention about back porches is that it is also a place for friends and family to gather. A place where they can just take in the view, or talk about the day or about nothing with you. A place to visit with you Lisa

  2. Glad to be on your back porch with you. Good analogy. Now the idea for all of us is to learn to recognize when we are on others’ back porches. I am thinking on expanding my back porch, literally and figuratively speaking.

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