Back Porch Poetry

Old Kentucky Home

Jogging out the rain alone to my thoughts along the road by the racetrack— people driving past must think me strange.

Out here like this, treading water just to feel a little something of you more closely, more clearly listening at you play awhile for me, for us — the thoroughbreds safe in their stalls, half the state under storm watch watching you watching us, washing over us spitting, spattering, stuttering summer rain streaming down into the gutters cut beneath the sidewalk pulling yesterday’s far-flung clover clippings with it—

I think, I feel, I love you more and more: my home away from home the only one I’ve ever had but barely known, and all my quick, heavy breaths of you crashing slick pavement underfoot— cannot (begin to) convey how much I do.

Someday, if I had to guess when my few miles have been run I’ll retire to you old Kentucky home— I hope I die out here, like this, in the rain wet as the farm dogs.

Every poem I have ever written, lousy as they all have been started, I think, with the rain and longing for a home.--Ben Self AmeriCorps Volunteer, Christian Appalachian Project Lexington, KY