"ON THE PORCH"

A cherished childhood friend gave me Sandy Brook’s “I Begin Through the Grass” shortly after I moved to Maine. Sandy was the owner and award-winning publisher of the YORK COUNTY COAST STAR from 1957 to 1977. Kathy worked at the STAR and, coincidentally, personally, was the catalyst for my move here. 

Brook’s book of 53 columns and editorials, sometimes only paragraphs long, quickly became both a favorite and a reference. His exquisite words remind me why I settled here and what I so appreciate about this coastal region of southern Maine. 

This particular chapter celebrates October.

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ON THE PORCH

I know the scene so well. The moon is where it must be. The shadows the trees make in the moonlight are there, quiet on the barn. I know the give and creak of the old deck on the uncovered porch. I know the gleam of the mud-flats when the tide is out, seen past the lilac bushes and the driveway and the flower garden I dug out of the rock.

I know the flash of the lighthouse on Goat Island and the quiet of the countryside with the people gone from the few summer cottages across the wide flats. I know this wooden porch, of recent years, so well. It is where I go out of the confines of the house to be refreshed, out of the secluded house where I have toiled and joyed and sorrowed in the past ten years enough for a lifetime, it seems, the house where we have grown older and the children have developed the forms and characters that will haunt them for the rest of their lives.

I know the cold moon in the sky, softened by mist. I know it even better, of old. The old October moon, with winter coming, soft now, silent, climbing high, without a breath to help it ride. I know the moon like a conscience. I know it as a reminder of youthful dreams, old dreams, almost gone now that hide stiffly in the moon shadows and make the memories harder to bear, as the acorn drops into the dry leaves, suddenly, in the stilly October night. 

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Thanks to Ken Janes for his perfect photography.