An April Day on the Porch
The porch was already talking
when I came to it,
screens humming low,
that bright susurrus slipping in
like a tune you don’t remember learning
It settled in me,
head and chest -
easy as breath,
steady as a Saturday that don’t rush nobody.
I stretched out on the love seat,
April sun laid across me
like it meant to stay awhile.
Bruegger pressed close at my side,
warm, sure,
his ribs rising slow
like he trusted the whole wide day
to hold us.
I opened The Phantom of the Opera,
and Paris came creeping in from below,
not the bright part first,
but the underneath:
stone and echo,
water that don’t ripple,
and a voice moving through it
like it belonged there
more than anything living.
A man behind it.
Hidden.
Listening longer than he speaks.
The porch kept breathing.
That susurrus threaded everything,
through the screens,
through the pages,
through me -
till I couldn’t tell
if it was wind
or something remembering itself.
Bruegger’s ear twitched once,
then again,
like he caught a note I missed.
I read.
Lost the line.
Found it again.
Sleep came soft -
didn’t take me,
just laid a hand on my shoulder
and waited
until I followed.
And I went down,
not off the porch,
but under it
into long corridors
where sound moved first
and everything else followed.
Water breathed there.
Light held its place
without flame.
And somewhere
a voice not meant to be seen
kept singing anyway.
Then,
sun shifting,
light leaning west,
I woke
with the book open on my chest
and Bruegger still there,
steady as truth.
The day had slowed some,
but it wasn’t done.
“Beware the Phantom,”
the page seemed to murmur -
or maybe it was that susurrus again,
now settled deeper -
in bone,
in breath,
in the quiet places
you don’t name out loud.
So I read on.
Afternoon thinned into evening
like a long note fading sweet,
the kind you don’t want to end.
The porch dimmed gentle,
no hurry,
no sharp edges,
just a soft turning
toward night.
Love bent strange in that story,
reaching,
missing,
staying anyway.
A man unseen
wanting more than anything
to be seen
and not feared for it.
And something in me
recognized that shape,
not the mask,
not the darkness,
just the staying back,
the listening,
the way a voice can carry farther
when the body doesn’t follow it.
When I closed the book,
it was late -
the kind of late that listens.
Bruegger shifted closer.
The windows stayed open.
That susurrus still moved,
bright, low, constant -
resting in my head,
in my chest,
like something
not finished speaking.
And somewhere,
not Paris, not here,
but a place between -
a voice held one last note,
just past where it should break,
and let it linger.
GBS jr
2007
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