Song's blend of deceptive quiet and spontaneous self-study powers "The White Porch" (1983). A subtly erotic piece bound up in the commonalities of a woman's day, the poem unfolds in a three-stage presentation. The tender chiming between "I" and "you" begins in the first stanza, which is set on a family porch at 12:05 p.m. Languorous diction pictures time stretched out like a lawn and compares wet hair to "a sleeping cat," an introit to the inswept sexual passions that emerge with feline grace. Line 21 begins the upward spiral of sensuality as the female speaker acknowledges "this slow arousal."
The intrusion of a third person, the speaker's mother, literally grabs attention by grasping the daughter's braided rope of hair, a symbol of patterned proprieties. The hair, no longer lush from a fresh shampoo, continues to unite images as the mother's ring snags strands, a suggestion that parental control is a minor intrusion on the daughter's mature passion. Like the knotted hair, the mother curls into "tight blankets" as the daughter loosens her hair and signals a welcome to her lover.
