Visitor

The wide porch with its green wicker furniture looks out on the little park that splits the street. Great gnarled oak trees stand guard over the weathered benches scattered here and there. Veterans these oaks are, many with amputated limbs after untold years of nor’easters and hurricanes, but still standing tall. A new generation of squirrels plays tag up and down the trunks and branches. I pretend I am on my old porch (just a few blocks away), sitting on the blue and white striped cushions of my glider, looking out at the park with its great oaks that split that street in two. Now I am a visitor; I refuse to say I am a tourist. I am still an islander, though I now live far away.