Beth Borrus, August 17, 2025
On the front porch, well I don’t call it a porch, of course, but the deck is the best part of the house, even though the climate only allows me to use it about half the year. Custom-made like everything in this place, the upper deck has wrap-around benches where I like to perch and observe. We are up on a hill, and I watch the cars and trucks go by, the activity of the birds on the shoreline, the movement of clouds around the mountain.
There is a lower portion, with built in flower boxes and a section with a tin roof, providing shade and a great place to watch the rain come down all around you, barely getting wet. More wrap-around benches on the lower deck. My cafe table and chairs, the rainbow hammock, the flowers. It’s my kind of heaven.
Out here, where it can get so dark. Out here, where there are so many stars. A million fireflies in the dark The sound of water lapping at the sand, the sound of birdsong, of my songs–
Why I like to sing in the open air, an audience of avians. Set up on something like a stage, audible but invisible, singing to the water, singing to the moon.
Soon, I’ll be stuck inside, snow piled up on the planks. I painted in April or May-trees across the street bare of leaves, revealing quiet white silence behind.
SecretSalon.blog 
“On the Front Porch,” a different time
August 17, 2025
truth be told, it’s the back porch.
The front porch is a bleached-white
concrete stoop that leads to
the foy-er, as we called it.
A small entryway
empty of anything.
A strange opening into a different portal.
The front of the house was the back.
As long as I’ve lived.
The back porch they screened-in.
Set down damp floral couches, a glass ashtray on a stand,
a couple of rickety white, tall-backed rocking chairs that
we dare not lean back in
a solid brown wood carved with spirals
and 1930s designs: the other chairs.
An indoor-outdoor carpet
the porch just off the kitchen, which is where
everyone entered
opening first the porch door
then the kitchen door
with its window and its brass knob
that rattled
abruptly opening into
the formica island table
my grandmother had built
where we all gathered for meals,
birthdays, holidays, funeral feasts and the last goodbye
when the morticians wheeled her through
the kitchen
where they barely fit, and out into the night
through the back front porch
for the last time
behind her
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