Porches
My wife asks me to leave
the porch light on before bed.
I ask if we are expecting
guests; she says it’s to keep
them away. There was a time
a flame in a window was
a welcome mat, a compass
in the dark. Tradition has
a way of unraveling the longer
it lasts. Think candles
to repel the moth; I wonder
how we learned to fear the light
more than its absence. When
I grab the banister and step
without flipping the switch on,
my memory is a stairwell, groaning
under shadow cast by porches—
neighbors inviting me to stay.
