Cleaning The Front-Porch Light For Thanksgiving Poem by Jared Carter

To balance there, again, in the early dark,
three rungs up on the old stepladder,
afraid to go any higher, it wobbles so -
to reach out and find the first set-screw
stripped of its thread, barely holding the lip
in place - to stretch even farther, twisting
the next one to break the rust, turning
the last with the tips of your fingers until
the white globe drops down smooth and round
in your hands, and you see inside a pool
of intermingled wings and bodies, so dry
it stirs beneath your breath. To watch them
flutter, again, across the grass, when you
climb down and shake them out in the wind.


From Pincushion's Strawberry. First published in Plainsong.


The image below shows the side porch of William Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, in Oxford, Mississippi.