Front Porch Review
A literary magazine for the young of heart and mind

We take you to the Andy Warhol show
you're squirming in my arms
while I stroll and gaze
at silk-screened red and green
portraits of Marilyn –
they cover half a wall. 

We move into the balloon room
and you stop wiggling.
On a bench by the wall we sit 
and people wander through
while seven silver pillows float
helium-bloated, to and fro
within a billowing tent. 

Suddenly
like a glimmering fish, one dives at you
nosing up to your nose! You shriek!
Oh, isn't it neat! We're laughing, lingering
quite a while before we're ready to move.

The next room has cows – purple cows
on a chartreuse ground
all over the walls! You are only two; cows
mean nothing to you, but I, your grandma,
think they are grand.

What a day! Near the exit admiring sketches
of fat pink cherubs, I hear
a man's voice behind me softly say
"You're beautiful!"
I turn to see him smiling at you
you're sleepy and don't seem to care, but I blush!
For a heartbeat I 'm 25 again. 

By Patricia Bass

Patricia Bass is a retired graphic designer whose avocation is writing. Her poems and prose have appeared in Wright College's The Wright Side and in Osher Lifelong Learning Institute's The Journal. She grew up in a small Utah town and studied art in Salt Lake City while working at a drugstore soda fountain. To pay for further art courses, she worked for three years in a cafeteria at a civilian-military post in the Utah desert. In 1955 she moved to Chicago where she combined marriage and family with art studies and a twenty-five-year design career. After retiring she took a few writing courses, liked what she was doing and continued for a degree in English with a minor in writing. Pat lives in Chicago and is currently readying her first book of poems for publication.