The Sun Porch

Lyrics

Not for sitting. Not today. 
Past the rooms of presentation, to the room of preservation. 
To the light.
Down the Back Hall, the floorboards give a little. 
That scent from the Mud Room door… damp wool and soil, a promise of winter. 
I turn away from the Dining Room's heavy silence, its polished, waiting dark. 
Some things are preserved in silver and shadow. 
My work needs the sun. 
This little glass room at the end of everything. 
My patient kingdom.
The air is warm and dry, thick with golden dust. 
Each particle a year, a day, a breath caught in the light. 
This is not a room, it is a jar. 
Sealed not with wax, but with sun. 
And everything inside is held. Held perfectly still.
The wicker chairs remember the weight of bodies long since gone. 
The terracotta pots hold the ghosts of geraniums from 1934, their phantom scent sharp on the air. 
Here are the herbs, hanging in tidy bundles, their green life dried into spice and spell. 
Here are the lemon slips, their roots finding purchase in water I set out yesterday, or was it fifty years ago? The hands in the memory feel like mine. 
This is the work that outlasts the clock.
The air is warm and dry, thick with golden dust. 
Each particle a year, a day, a breath caught in the light. 
This is not a room, it is a jar. 
Sealed not with wax, but with sun. 
And everything inside is held. Held perfectly still.
The warmth on my arms has a sound. It is the sound of things holding their form. 
A low C-sharp against the quiet. 
I look into a shaft of light, and the motes are not dust. They are worlds. 
Each one a perfect, tiny Sun Porch. 
There is the one with the blue cushions from the war. There is the one with the cracked pane from the blizzard of 1978. 
They float in order. An index of themselves, written in light.
I run a finger along the glass. Cool. 
The sun is lower now. The dust settles. 
The hum fades with the heat. 
The jars are all sealed. 
Everything is in its place.