The porch boards creaked beneath our chairs,
worn smooth by years and summer air,
while lightning bugs blinked in the holler shade
and Granny brought the beans we’d gathered that day.

A galvanized bowl sat at her feet,
green as June and smelling sweet,
and she’d snap each stem with weathered hands
that knew these hills like they knew the land.

“Now don’t waste nothin’,” she’d always say,
as bean strings curled and fell away.
Her voice was soft as creek-worn stone,
steady and sure as a churchyard home.

The mountains rested blue and still,
their shadows stretching across the hill.
Somewhere a whippoorwill called low,
and the evening breeze began to blow.

We’d talk of kinfolk, living and gone,
of hard winters and gardens strong,
of coal camps, floods, and Sunday clothes,
and things only mountain people know.

The sun sank slow behind the ridge,
painting gold on every bridge
between the past and where we sat,
with a lap full of beans and a porchside cat.

I never knew then what I know now—
how time slips quiet somehow,
how one day you’d give anything
to hear again those beanstrings sing.

For Granny’s gone, and the porch stands bare,
though her spirit lingers in the mountain air.
And every summer when the gardens yield,
I find her waiting in the bean field.

I snap the stems the way she showed,
following that old familiar road,
and for a moment, the years grow thin—

And I’m stringing green beans with Granny again.