Changing the Front Porch Light for Thanksgiving
By Jared Carter
To balance there, again, in the early dark,
three rungs up on the old stepladder,
afraid to go any higher, it wobbles so—
to reach out and find the first set-screw
stripped of its thread, barely holding the lip
in place—to stretch even farther, twisting
the next one to break the rust, turning
the last with the tips of your fingers until
the white globe drops down smooth and round
in your hands, and you see inside a pool
of intermingled wings and bodies, so dry
it stirs beneath your breath. To watch them
flutter, again, across the grass, when you
climb down and shake them out in the wind.
Copyright Credit: Poem copyright ©2019 by Jared Carter, "Changing the Front Porch Light for Thanksgiving," from The Land Itself, (Monongahela Press, 2019). Poem reprinted by permission of Jared Carter and the publisher.