michaelafinch

There is a scene in the movie “The Straight Story”, at the very end, when Alvin and his brother, Lyle, are sitting on the narrow porch of Lyle’s small trailer. Hard to think of it as much of a porch, nor much of a trailer really. The trailer sits in a small clearing in the woods somewhere in western Wisconsin, close to the Mississippi River. It is mid-autumn and the leaves are past the point of brilliance, but still bright enough to catch your eye. The hills roll, in a gentle way, the beauty isn’t eye popping stunning, it is more of a relaxed peaceful slow pleasure, the ease of the north woods.

It has been many years since thoughts began of the time when I will spend my days sitting on a porch, whiling away the time, watching the leaves fall and the listening to the wind idly breeze through the tall branches, the scent of dried grass, fall leaves and wood smoke from farms down river. I yearn for it, convinced of the soon to be day when my eyes close and I feel the hint of winter against my face and sip on that blessed first morning coffee as the sun starts its short and slanted path along the southern sky.

It remains unknown of were my porch lies, it is but a dream being chased, the outstretched fantasies of youth that wrap into mid life that so often die in the vanishing years of age that sweeps down on us in a sudden and hauntingly quiet veil over our dying days. But we always yearn and promise ourselves of that faraway dream; after all, what all else is there to keep us.

It is simple dream, a simple house with a creaking wooden, falling sloped down porch, early rise of the scent of morning salted pork bacon through the open window and a fading dew, promise of a brilliant azure deep rich sky of a waning fall. To sit and think and listen, to nothing more than listen to thoughts and the world and nature, to count the time at God’s pace.

Someday soon I will start out on my journey to a faraway bend, down road to hillside and creek run, modest house and that simple porch of wood view and sky tall. Where will you all go in your dreams fulfilled?