Something is seriously enchanting about reading by moonlight. Especially poetry, under the moon. Particularly the full moon rising over the Front Porch Music stage in Valparaiso. "There's no place like it on earth," says poet Randall Nicholas, who will be reading his Poems from the Porch there Friday, October 2, starting at 8 PM.
The evening consists of original poems celebrating the musicians who regularly perform at the Porch's Thursday night open stage, and those mostly unheard performers having their say moment by moment within each of us.
Audiences who have followed the poet's two-year career at the Porch may perceive him in this way: There is a man with a bald head and a white beard standing on a stage somewhere in Indiana reading off a page something you might take to heart because he stands for you and all those things you are coming to understand about yourself, and you can hear him working these things out together with you if you listen to your heart and what it’s saying in response; which is, at first, I don’t want to do that, I don’t want to pry into myself the way he’s doing, yank free the boarded-up door and walk those dark steps down with just a penlight to where I might not come back. But then there’s assurance sensing you can trust him, that he has indeed gone and come back whence unrecorded you have been, sure you’d never hear it spoken of, much less written out and read. And if there is a heaven, it’s down there with him showing the ceiling, walls, and floor of the room you thought was hell adorned with harmless bric-a-brac you can handle and observe and not be terrified of, as a coyote, snake, or hawk come into your yard you recognize and marvel at.
So come and listen to this man and follow him both down and up the steps unto yourself repeatedly, and gradually gain your happiness. Call 219-464-4700 for tickets. Door opens at 7 PM Friday, October 2, at Front Porch Music, 505 E. Lincolnway, Valparaiso.