Within the globe of glowing light,
a domed domain sunk into the deepening dusk,
the little porch light is suspended
in an eternal battle against the dark.
Within the blip day lilies close for the night,
their yellow lips so softly sealed against rough weather
and their green already in tangled shadows,
rearranged by the whipping of the wind.
The slatted wood of the deck stretches out
so far into the darkness, a place
where only the violent gusts of pitch pine tops
are discernible, way over head,
against the faint luminescence of a sky too cloudy for stars.
And if you sit on the step,
crouched in a minuscule bubble of light in a bubble of black,
your hands gripping at the wooden board
worn smooth by years of feet,
you will be enveloped, by the summer before the storm,
just as your ear drums are by the waves,
pounding one fourth of a mile away.