Her Screen Porch Poem by Diane Lee Moomey

has a wicker chair with yellow chintz
that's curved to fit her, cabbage roses curved
to fit her; mother's mother. Wooden floor
was red, then blue, then green, now red again
—its peeling paint reveals the layers, fancies

of the farmer's wives, the mother's mother's
mothers gone before—repainted every
other spring. That floor now sags beneath
the weight of all their decades: every mother,
having daily laundered, pickled, scrubbed,

would leave her steamy kitchen, take her hour
in a wicker chair to peer through wire
mesh once-taut across its wooden frame.
She'd watch: who's walking hand-in-hand and who's
alone, who's got a baby carriage. Summer

days, I'd visit. Summer evenings, call
to supper. Sticky hands, child's hands
slapped that screen door open, slammed it closed
again―don't slam the door! wash your hands,
take a plate, stop running! Running ‘round

the ell of porch cornering the house
to table set behind the vine of Dutchman's
Pipe, our privacy from street and yellow
jacks.I'd eat out there and sleep out there ―
that rusty screen enough to buffer from

the darkest dangers of those summer nights.