Porchsitting vision
--

Humid still air
crouched around
cold steel under bare feet
its chill floating through back pockets
up the spine.

I shiver silently
and take another pull of
thick smoke wafting slowly
from the pipe in my hand.
Quite a vantage point

from atop these stairs.
I can almost see an opulent garden
standing under a strata
of eighty years of foot traffic
concrete, oil stains
cigarette butts.

Eyelids droop and there,
400 years to the side and down a little
marshy lowlands teeming with insects

thick with ground cover plantessimals
towering trees long since cleared

for construction

Elegant mossy braids hanging from their boughs;
I lean back in a cleft of cypress branching,
knobby root knees staring up from
mirror pools at the base;
palms muttering softly from higher ground to the left.

I'm reluctant to open weary eyes,
leave the smell of decaying leaves,
calm sticky marsh breeze
leave the owls stately song
and climb back,
back to those steel stairs,
chill lifeless steel stairs
and hard concrete parking lot below.
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