Watchin’ the World Go By
As I swept my large front porch today, I suddenly remembered the rockers stored in my fruit cellar. They’re fine old pieces, these two, sturdy and well built, and hauling them out has become for me a ritual that ushers in summer.
They were gifts from a friend who had inherited them from his grandparents. He had no room for them in his apartment and wanted them to be somewhere that they would feel at home.
I think they like my porch, with its view of the meadow and wooded rolling hills. I sit in the grandmother’s chair at sunset, and sometimes the old man who owns the field behind mine comes to sit in the other one and sip a glass of iced tea.
I watch the little chimney swifts dart above the pines at sunset, their silvery chirps so bright that I’ve come to call them “the sparkle birds.” Their song is the descant to the other songbirds’ evening chorus.
Sometimes, when the night is very still, I sit in Grandma Mitchell’s rocker and watch the stars. I imagine that I hear her and Grandma Mitchell talking about the how the crops are doing and about the weather in the quiet way long-married people talk at the close of the day.
I breathe in the sweetness of the grass and listen to the crickets who continue the evensong after the birds have tucked themselves in for the night. It’s my hour for savoring, for drinking in the serenity of the night and letting my mind drift through time and out to the starry skies.
It’s a time of peace and beauty. And often I wish we would all make more time just to sit on a porch, or a roof, or a stoop, just watchin’ the world go by.
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