I have not moved form off this porch,
this porch where sunlight falls
in tidy columns
on the overgrown grass below.

I have not moved,
nor have I slept,
but presided silently
over morning’s passing
and the slow, serious rise of the sun.

Neighborhood children,
heavy-headed, awkward,
kick a ball and scream
across the courtyard
where a lone gray boulder sits
and rows of houses crowd about.

The giant oak near the trailer park
casts shadows on a sleeping dog.

A tank-topped girl calls from the house
to the squinting boy
with a jar in his hand.

At the creek,
children squat with sticks in hand
and **** a dying frog.

Without a thought,
I have noted mother calls
rise and fall across the dell.

I have watched the giant oak
with one, great wooden arm
impale the earth and hold it still.
I have heard the mongrel pup whine
by the barbed wire fence.

And when the sun is tangled in the trees
I shall doze in the failing light
or replace this chair against the wall
where the wood is notched and gray.