Views From the Porch

Suburbia sprawls around the front porch. Shy deer peep out of front windows then whisk out of sight. The groundhog is delivering news of the day, he thumps his paws, morse coding headlines only to run back into his one bedroom apartment under the roof of his green hideaway. I could be shelling peas or whittling a piece of wood with a Buck knife, should be rocking back and forth on an old hickory rocker but here in suburbia such things are recalled through peepholes in narrowing horizons. This morning I aim my seeking mind at the house chipmunk, who for a while rests in the morning sunlight; all night he has been chiseling away at the concrete step, perhaps tunnelling out of here into a wilderness he has never seen. We all must find a new story for old paths, why not here in the heart of these urban tracts where strips of green imagine wide open spaces? We were born to travel here and there every day a new frontier. This place can be an uncharted map also snugged as it is into a small glow globe of back and front yard denizens a glass that if shaken reveals new backwoods views.