Others filled to the gills with guilt.

Maybe what we all could use is a house with a big front porch.

Maybe what we all could use is a neighborhood of houses

with big front porches. Rocking chairs. A shared space

out back with a pecan tree, a barbeque pit, a garden.

A crowded kitchen on a fall afternoon. Folks chopping

onions and pickles for potato salad, cabbage for coleslaw,

half with mayonnaise, half vinegar-based.

What we’ll need to settle on is a recipe for boiling rice.

And who out back will fry the fish, and who

will grill the steaks — well done, medium rare, raw in the middle.

The kids will bring a gunnysack-full of pecans

and one of the grown-ups, a nutcracker.

The bakers in the group will make desserts — lemon chess,

apple cobbler, brownies. Those who tend the garden

will clip dried hydrangeas for the table.

We’ll need a long table.