This Is My Front Porch Now

This is my front porch now: this couch, this lamp, this view outside. Here, mostly, I read, and write, and journal and blog, and watch tv and study and grade when I have those things to do.
There was another porch, fronting against my childhood Indiana home. And in it, a cushioned glider, an art deco floor lamp, the view of the front sidewalk and street shaded by the big maple tree.

The sights and sounds of the front street world I now get electronically, through the tv and radio and housecam monitors (my actual view looks through the patio to the back yard, canal bushes and western sky, but I like to see what's happening "out front.")

It's a busy street here for a residence, as it was there on my former porch. Lots of cars and trucks go by, and people walking and jogging, exercising their dogs, riding bikes and skating (but now on rollerblades, with helmets and knee protectors). I never knew who might be coming down the street, and the same happens here.

Service trucks, vendors, delivery vans roar by, lawn trimmers and roof cleaners, an occasional patrol car or code enforcement troll parks and scrutinizes the property--. The world goes by, life goes by. From my front porch I see what I see, hear what I hear. But I never cease to wonder what's next, as I did six decades ago on the former porch.

And I note the hour and the day, the changing air, the angle of the summer sun, and wonder at the constant flux and variety. And as then, I have so many questions and so few answers. As then, I have so much to learn. What is? What should be? And why?

So many things to consider, plans to plan, dreams to dream--a whole life ahead of me, and a whole life behind me. A whole family gone now, and another whole new family emerging. Wondrous, wonderful things to marvel and appreciate.

I think most people have a favorite place, a favorite chair perhaps, from which they like to cast their gaze upon the world. I think every soul has a home. Perhaps mine is here, as it was there some sixty years ago.