Start of Porch Season

At last, ma cherie, it is time for the languid and curried hours of porch love---oh, how we have missed you, fickle mistress, during your endless stay in your sister Persephone's guest cottage in Hades, finally over until October.

Yet you taunt us in February, a lozenge of warmth from two until five on a Wednesday afternoon, only to flit off again with the giggle of a teenage girl--so cruel, yet so delicious. It helped me remember the winter sun in the tropics, also gold and cool, burnishing the world with an amber glow before suddenly slipping away behind a man-o-war cloud.

In March there were a few false starts, one splendid stretch on a Saturday afternoon that tanned the tops of my feet, and I succumbed to the decadence completely by dozing off for an hour or so. My anxiety was gently treated by these brief embraces and promises of an extended stay soon, perhaps with your next visit. My role as the porch priestess was to keep the watch for the first hint of clear blue skies after one pm, have some urgent reading material ready, some cold and refreshing liquid tribute accessible, and position the solar seating at the correct angle to the position of the sun. I take my duties seriously.

Finally, Enchanted April, as you began to venture away from your winter digs more frequently, dragging out those last damp goodbyes with the Hades', with some hail and sideways freezing rainy days tossed in just because you can, because your games always turn out so beautifully in May, because you know we can't help ourselves that we love you, tolerate the infidelity each fall, and will always make ready the best chambers in our hearts for you. That first day-long picnic with you in May, those endless warm days in June reading poetry from the inside of my eyelids to you while I hover in the still blue air---I live for this, and you know it.

Why do I fight you? So silly of me, but there is work for me to do, tasks of living with my feet on the ground that must be done, reading and cleaning and working for that coin and paper that mean so much down here. But you don't understand, you are the ultimate source of energy, of light, what makes everything else go.

I know it. And left the tropics in spite of it, and there are rare times when I remember that day of my first summer there, in early July, when the humidity was so high, and I had no shadow standing by that giant fuschia bouganvilla. I looked around and the sky was bleached white, there was no blue, yet no clouds at all, the light was coming from right over my head and pressed down like a white-hot anvil, the only shadows were lying deep under a giant banyan grove across the white coral dirt alley. There wasn't even a breath of air or breeze, the palm fronds hung heavy and slack like sweaty hands. Nothing moved, the white heat shimmered and I could feel my bones melting. Complete seduction, I was now forever a servant to the rays of the sun and follower of the changing light.