Back Porch
Sam Potter and Christina Shinkle
© 2016 all rights reserved
Back Porch
Faded photographs
Summers and faces streaming past
It does not matter what age I am
Say line up by height
And I’m back in a row with my cousins again
In the Midwest
You learn to read family subtitles
I love you so comes out as
Come back soon
And I’m going to miss you gets stuck tight
And ends up trapped inside of
I’ll try not to let you down
Outside
The sidewalk tastes like rain
Inside it’s going to be pot roast again
Marbles, Hydrox
and Western paperbacks
At Grandma’s house we do the dishes by hand
In the Midwest...
The town’s got trains and a river too
Migrations of grandkids fly on through
Our visits bear the weight of moving away
And the What If
of what if we'd stayed
Back porch
Almost time to leave
Car’s packed - I dart back in for a final pee
On last days
The ritual is the same
We line up by height on the stoop and cameras take their aim
In the Midwest...