Covered Porch, Downtown

This poem, "Covered Porch, Downtown," is one that in some ways eludes me. I'm not necessarily sure what I was trying to get at when I wrote it. What I did know was that I liked the details, and I liked the sort of hopefulness of the woman, smiling as she pushes her shopping cart down the sidewalk, despite the odds against her - her age (and the weakness that would probably come with that), the rain, the cracks in the sidewalk. I would imagine that the cart wheels do not roll especially smoothly. Despite all of this she still manages to carry out her quotidian routine. The stoicism of the woman conveys to the narrator a sense of hope. This hopefulness inspires the narrator with a similar hope, even a stoicism towards his own surroundings, and brings him to the James Wright-ish statement, "I am making peace with God." Through this the rain in a way becomes a baptism, the speaker being washed cleaned in this moment of renewal.

COVERED PORCH, DOWNTOWN

Sitting on the covered porch downtown
in the summer, afternoon,
I listen to the husky whisper
of rain padding on the shingles
and aluminum drainpipes,
gathering in puddles on the concrete.

A woman, likely in her eighties,
pushes a cart over the cracks
in the sidewalk, through the enveloping fog.
Her face is withered, sad.
She flashes me a smile as her
left-front wheel catches on the pavement.

I am making peace with God.