A Vision From The Porch
The haze was gone from the air hanging over the field, burned off by the sun as it rose over the southeastern ridge and began falling across the river and steadily toward the west, nesting its bottom half behind Jack’s Mountain. Light, now angular and painted, offered life beyond a mere blue and white existence to the sky between the mountains, like an awakening to greater meaning in the final minutes before death brings night. Song birds, ever-active in the closing minutes of the day, composed the soundtrack to the final few, burning moments of light — their tweets and trills the poignant troughs and crescendos that allowed us to understand what the picture was telling us. My guitar adding accents to their notes, picked by clumsy but loving fingers attempting to turn vision into vibration. I sat, contented, on a wooden chair resting on the wooden boards of our front porch.
The garden grew in beautifully that year, tall with corn, colorful with peppers and tomatoes. All the product of her loving work. Some artists use canvas and others the composition sheet, but some, those more attuned with the natural world, find their medium in the soil. As she filled our plates, the green beans taking their place next to the venison I’d hunted, she filled her soul. While the light fell, she toiled, making use of the summer heat’s relent and a cool evening breeze coming off of the river. I heard her pulling and pausing, shoveling and examining, and I knew, that even if only for brief glimpses, she watched the sun paint the sky as it drifted behind the mountain. That thought has always brought me peace.
Fumbling through a challenging chord, I watched my fingers as I picked, losing vision on the grander life around me, over focused on the task at hand. The notes would be what they should, if I let them. But my eyes found my fingers while missing the world. Hearing a subtle, barefoot step land on the edge of the porch boards, I looked up to find her. Sweating, her clothes stained with soil, her skin mocha from the summer sun. Her wavy hair falling to her shoulders, wild with effort. Scanning her in an instant, I found her eyes as they lifted into a smile and the corners of her mouth followed. I could see the world again.
