.

On the Porch

The roof and eaves, low walls or none, slim railings,
Contrive a sense of shelter customary.
Worn floor between front steps and door betokens
Minutes or hours of ease preliminary.

The aura framed by any style of column
Enhances intimate communication,
For porch-positioned outlooks gently foster,
Without a need for it, good conversation.

Here’s freedom from blank solitude’s enclosure
In grace and comfort unsophisticated,
Security from inquiry contentious
Where circumstances look less complicated:

Whittling, stitching, stringing beans or building
A model ship in shipboard-close conditions,
Stepping out to talk about the weather
From a portico of practical ambitions.

This threshold ushers in a wholesome wonder
When lightning, thunder, sudden summer showers,
Raise steam from sidewalks, and emerging neighbors
Refresh fair fellowship in ferns and flowers:

Verandah stocked with ornamental peppers
And baskets trickling gloriosa lilies,
Pedestals for showy pots of crotons,
Geraniums or brilliant amaryllis.

Ideas and lifeplans whisper, soft and sprightly,
To children watching welcome or a parting;
The mailman brings important correspondence
That now and then foretells transition starting.

The sky-blue ceiling brightens forward-faring,
Since porches (front or side or screened or blow-through
Or wrap-around or turret) are backed up by
Home structure that supports a to-and-fro view.

Early displayed, the flag salutes warm breezes.
Jays screech, and squirrels flee the midday sprinkles;
In drifting calm, a cat naps on a cushion
Until the atmosphere wears twilit wrinkles.

After the daily newspaper’s arrival,
Chairs regularly rock while elders read it.
The swing sways, occupied by young observers
Of fluctuating screens that supersede it.

A lantern animates the porch at evening,
Except when fireflies gather near to flicker
Magically above surrounding roses,
As distant vistas fade and dreams glow thicker.

.

.

Margaret Coats lives in California.  She holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University.  She has retired from a career of teaching literature, languages, and writing that included considerable wrk in homeschooling for her own family and others.

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30 Responses

  1. Russel Winick

    Margaret – what an amazing house! I felt like I was there! Seeing the great photograph first really set the tone. “Refresh fair fellowship in ferns and flowers” might be my favorite line. Lovely! Thanks for the great morning read!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Russel, on behalf of my great-grandfather who designed and built the house, and of myself for the poem. May your every morning be refreshed with fair fellowship!

      Reply
  2. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I am always on the alert for a poem you wrote to enthrall me and lift my spirits. This enchanting poem of a peaceful home where dreams are kept and born reminded me of my childhood, although my home was much more austere and small. The one in your poem seemed set in an urban environment with mail delivery and newspapers delivered to the door. How pleasant it was to contemplate your Americana scene and peacefulness of the surroundings. To say I loved it is an understatement.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks so much, Roy. I remember mail and newspaper delivery by bicycle in my childhood–but that was on a different porch in the larger town of DeLand near Lake Helen, Florida, where this house is located. This photograph is from the 1920s, when Lake Helen probably had a population of 300. But from some stories of your early life, that may have seemed urban! I have dozens of pictures of this house, as family members were early enthusiasts for photography. They do represent peaceful and nostalgic Americana, especially one with my grandmother, about 10 years old, wearing a Statue-of-Liberty crown, and a neighbor boy dressed as George Washington.

      Reply
  3. Cynthia Erlandson

    I love your description of the peaceful atmosphere that a lovely covered porch gives. The craft projects one can pursue; the anticipation of mail delivery; a place to observe what is happening with the weather, or to escape a sudden shower — these are all lovely. But I think my favorite lines are “For porch-positioned outlooks gently foster, without a need for it, good conversation.” I like it because it brings out the interesting fact that some places foster a much better atmosphere for good conversation than others do. What a beautiful house you grew up in! I just love wrap-around porches like the one in the picture.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      It is remarkable, isn’t it, what good conversation can happen in places that might not seem to be designed for it! This house has always been among my dreams, though it was my mother and grandmother who grew up in it. Just drove by it once more on last month’s visit to my home state. Thanks, Cynthia, for sharing your appreciation of porches and of the poem.

      Reply
  4. Joseph S. Salemi

    A beautiful poem, to match a very beautiful house. The photograph and the accompanying piece conjure up a deeply satisfying euphoria of ease, contentment, solidity, and human scale.

    All the lines in the quatrains end feminine, and in many other cases I would find this somewhat awkward. But here they flow smoothly, without a problem. The required substitutions are expertly handled.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Joseph. Feminine endings for 44 lines, with half of them also double-rhymed, is my tribute in this poem to my great-grandfather’s care in design and construction of the lovely porches that are the beauty surrounding the house he named “Edgewood.” Edges can be artistic finishing touches to make all the difference in structure, as porches so often show!

      Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Michael. Indeed, in the evening, when the porch becomes a stage lighted up as all else falls into darkness, it becomes a kind of theatre. Persons present realize they are “on stage” and may act self-consciously for the time the spotlight is upon them. Appreciate your comment bringing this up!

      Reply
  6. Gigi Ryan

    Dear Margaret,
    The porch of your poem is almost as central to the home as the kitchen as it boasts homey activities like bean snapping and handwork, spontaneous conversation, and the welcomes and goodbyes. The porch is also a transition from shelter to nature’s storms, birds, and foliage.

    What sold me on the house I live in now is, in fact, the porch.

    Our world needs more porches like the one you describe in lovely detail.

    Gigi

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Gigi, I agree, and I’m glad your home has a fine porch. You are right about it being almost as central as the kitchen, serving as the place where everyone tends to gather. In the porch I remember with most affection, the kitchen of the house (not the one in the photo above) was very small.
      Naturally persons with some handiwork to do would prefer the porch as an airy, convenient and sociable space.

      Reply
      • Linda Marie Hilton

        Margaret, i am not sure you want this,
        but i think you have earned of your very own
        spin-off of “This Old House”.

      • Margaret Coats

        Linda Marie, I always want whatever anyone has to say about my work. “This Old House” brings us affection for lasting beauty located in many places, and I’m happy to hear you think “On the Porch” does something of the sort. Thank you!

  7. Linda Marie Hilton

    what a lovely house to have memories of!
    i just love old houses,

    lovely poem as well!!!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks, Linda! My memories came from long repeated drives by the house (and finally a tour from a kind owner). Loveliness increases its effect as time and attention go on.

      Reply
  8. Laura Deagon

    Margaret, your recollection of the porch of your ancestorial home is so descriptive and lovely. What a shame we typically don’t have such protective yet social retreats like this in most California neighborhoods. Love it!

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Laura, thanks! “Protective and social retreats” is a magnificent description of porches, and I too wish we had more in our local neighborhoods.

      Reply
  9. Warren Bonham

    Another gem! It reminds me of the poem Paul wrote a few days back about the Passing of Paper. It’s our loss as a society that we spend more and more time with our eyes focused on the small screens of our handheld devices while very little time is spent making connections on our porches (whether metaphoric or not).

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Warren, you’re right to focus on “making connections.” Even as an observer of nature on the porch, it seems we have come out of ourselves for an experience that can truly touch us, in ways that “device experience” does not. I recall friends showing me new computers, and the great image possibilities for immense available sights online. These are good indeed, and help us overcome some of our limitations, but the porch or the church or the beach or the lunch with friends is greater. Thank you for the little touch of the comment until we can meet on a porch!

      Reply
  10. Gary Krauss

    Margaret, a beautiful “painting” for those of us on the west coast who do not have an opportunity to experience all four seasons on a glorious porch that was part of your life. The few times we have traveled to such places, we enjoyed the profound distinction between inside and porch-side that you colorfully describe. We might have a better world if all of us could be blessed each day by the porch experience.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your responses, Gary! Indeed, it seems we recollect ourselves more profoundly if we have an area of approach to a significant experience. And a porch is an approach to both the home and to the world outside. It also has potential as a place for unhurried leisure. Yes, I agree! The world could use more porches.

      Reply
  11. Paul A. Freeman

    I agree with Russell, ‘…emerging neighbors / Refresh fair fellowship in ferns and flowers’, is an alliterative floral feast. Along with all the imagery, internal rhymes and memory triggers… A1 poetry.

    In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury’s classic dystopian novel has verandahs being left off of house designs to prevent people socialising and exchanging ideas, the purpose being that it’s one way to stem subversiveness.

    Your poem’s very nostalgic for me. In southern Africa we used to spend much of our lives on the ‘stoep.

    Thanks for the read, Margaret.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you, Paul! I’m glad you liked it, and found memory triggers. I haven’t read Fahrenheit 451, but know some other Bradbury fiction in which persons are motivated to stay indoors, and find that they are under surveillance if they go out. Still, as you say about the ‘stoep, outdoor socializing near home always seems to be a natural and comfortable pastime.

      Reply
  12. Julian D. Woodruff

    As others have said, Margaret, the house looks like a wonderful place to have grown up (outside &, I’m guessing, inside). Your poem is a marvelous paean to the complacencies of the porch, which seem set in relief by your use of feminine line endings (as Joseph points out), present participles & trailing adjectives. I suppose, if you wanted, you could write a poem related to each room in the house, and to the view from one or more of its windows.

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thanks for your comment, Julian! It was my grandmother who grew up in this house, and my mother for some years of her childhood. I remember another porch in a nearby town, but this house out in semi-rural Florida has always been in family dreams. I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone there to see it, and on one occasion the owner at the time kindly showed me through it, including the turret. I may have a few more family and Florida poems in me. We’ll see!

      Reply
  13. Mary Jane Myers

    Margaret

    This accomplished poem is a wonderful mix of precise observation and commentary about the importance of those porches, and by implication, what we’ve lost. Every line has a feminine ending, which suggests a kind of slow meditation. That is, the lines don’t end abruptly, and with a “bang”, but “hover” as it were. The activities have -ing endings, ie, gerunds, and this grammatical form suggests that the activities are constant and never-ending: whittling, stitching, stringing beans, building…. These activities allow for conversation. I’m reminded of all those women in prior-century novels who were forever embroidering, knitting, etc. (that said, not Madame DeFarge’s ominous knitting!)

    The meter is well-drafted iambic pentameter. In each stanza, lines 2 and 4 are rhymed, but the rhymes are not “exact” one- or two-syllable rhymes, but use a softer multi-syllabic palette. Lines 1 and 3 are not rhymed. Therefore, again, the effect is subtle, like a horse slow-walking, rather than competitively galloping through RhymeZone!

    My mother was from small-town Kentucky–and she added a southern-style back porch to the back of her home in suburban Louisville. The only difference (unfortunately)–her porch did not look out on an old fashioned street, so she couldn’t interact with neighbors. In fact, the neighborhood streets were “empty” during the day, though people walked their dogs or ran laps in the mornings and evenings. Of course, these pedestrians for the most part were wearing earbuds, and tuned in to some electronic medium, so they were not engaging in conversation with others.

    Mother sat out there every day with her “baskets trickling gloriosa lilies,” and “pedestals for showy pots of crotons.” And yes, her cat was typically napping on a cushion “in drifting calm.”

    I love your use of alliteration. My favorites are: “Refresh fair fellowship in ferns and flowers.” and “Except when fireflies gather near to flicker.”

    Most sincerely
    Mary Jane (Myers)

    Reply
    • Margaret Coats

      Thank you so very much, Mary Jane, for this essay in analysis. What I appreciate most is your judgment that the poem has a slow, old-fashioned Southern motion to it, corresponding to your mother’s style of life on her back porch in Louisville. One of my sisters lived there. I wouldn’t have thought of it at the time, but as I recall walking through the old town a few blocks from the river, there were porches galore. Haven’t strolled through that part of my memory for many years!

      The rhymes show the double-rhyme style that’s technically required when the end of the line is not an accented syllable. Sounds must match from the last accented syllable through the line’s end, but the preceding consonants should vary. Finding perfect rhymes is thus much more difficult, and I do have imperfect ones in stanzas 6 and 8. Stanza 9 may fulfill the requirement, if it can be said that the /spr/ in “sprinkles” is not the same preceding consonant as the /r/ in “wrinkles.” I’m not sure how to judge that one. Stanza 3 is an example of “rime riche,” acceptable in French but considered too exact (both words rhyme in /KAYted/) to be pleasing in English. It was fun to give this a try. Thanks again for noticing this and other features.

      Reply
  14. Linda Marie Hilton

    you are welcome, Margaret,
    i think the lively repartee
    your poem has generated is
    better than anything TV has
    produced recently.
    and your poem has made us
    exercise our “grey cells”,
    as Hercule Poirot calls them.

    Reply

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