Portico

Julie Hughes, "Old Bungalow," 2014

Remnants of a lost language grace the front door, all
Greek to our bungalow, whose stick-figure translation
of an ancient temple entrance frames a way in—not
to Old World gods, but to New World aspirations. Its
proportions are square as a shaped-note sing. Vestigial
columns thin as saplings, Homeric hymns lathed down
to American vernacular, it is a Sacred Harp architecture
as plain-spoken as its pagan ancestors were eloquent.