Benetvision Publications has just published a new book of Ellen's poems, Some Small Flower of Honesty. This link will take you directly to their site to order it, if you wish.

Dear Readers of Ellen's Poems:
These are the last poems to be published on this site...unless we uncover a few more that we don't know about yet. There are nearly 400 poems here, including the ones published in the book, A Hermit Holds My Heart. At this point Benetvision Publications is planning on producing another chapbook of Ellen's poems. Watch their website for information.

I hope you've enjoyed reading the writings of this beautiful poet, Ellen Porter. I've certainly enjoyed sharing them with you. Susan, osb

Ellen Porter
1/09/08
Worry Babies

The wooden turtle with bobbing head
races the worry babies of colored, stiffened string.

Vibrations from the nebulizer send them scurrying
across the cabinet, heads leaning forward
checking the currents of humidified air.

There is nothing to hold each other back
and so they waver over unfamiliar turf,
oxygen tubing intercepting their intended paths.
So little to do, resting in cancer’s interminable race toward death.
I eagerly thwart boredom and
root the turtle to the finish line.


Ellen Porter
1/8/08
writer’s constipation

these wordless mornings
i sleep in
avoiding pen and paper
till the last too late moment.
and then i sit and
force the verse
straining, waiting for the release
of waste and verbiage.

Ellen Porter
2/12/08
With a Lover’s Eyes (after Rumi)

Snow falls and
with a lover’s eyes
I delight in the
carpet of white
the prism of colors
within the sunbeam.

With my intellectual eyes
I check the temperature
and verify it is cold
and I see the road is slick.

My love sees your green eyes
the smooth plump skin
around your arms and waist
and I hunger for my
lips to find yours.

With intellectual ears
I notice your forgetfulness,
the hesitation before naming.

And still I love—
lover and intellectual—
thrown in bed together
with the Beloved Friend.


Ellen Porter
1/04/08
Wondrous Wise

Closest friendship:
two women speak their hearts
with measured words and few caresses.
We do not lie together
but experience our bodies
and souls as one.
The Beloved is wondrous wise
in permitting this
chaste and miraculous love.
The Beloved is wondrous wise
in teaching us to love Her
as we memorize our love for each other.

Ellen Porter
7/17/07
Whorled and Defined

Early every morning
before the sun even suggests its promised
pink and gold and blue
the color of a faded wild eggshell,
I open her book and read her impossible
prose, her poems describing a world
I have never seen, really seen
with deep down vision, three dimensional
as a spring columbine, blossoms
hanging like Chinese paper lanterns,
bobbing in the gentle, greening rain.

Early every morning
I open the book and read
trying to see with her magical eyes
trying to hear with her fetal ears
sensing the heart-thudding pulse
of a new awakening world.

But I will never write a poem
as tender as hers:
the flash of humming birds,
the eyes of a best-loved dog,
the flowering of spring, summer, fall meadows,
the black water ponds.

I will never write a single line like hers,
and so I open my fist gripping the pen,
unfold the fingers and fling away the sticky web
of forced imitation.
Then unburdened by the impossible and
free to see with my own astounding eyes,
to smell the personal fragrance of my own garden,
to spread ink across the fine blank sheet,
I am surprised by gestational syllables,
as word by word,
my soul’s own midwife
delivers a poem
unique as fingered prints,
whorled and defined.


Ellen Porter
12/22/07
Winter Solstice

longer days now
to seek my love.

Will I remember the grove
where we lay
camouflaged with burnished leaves
branches black now, shining with ebony rain?

I will go into the mountains to
seek that little forest
rest my head against stone
in solitude
weeping into my hands.

Ellen Porter
2/20/08
When I am Fifty-Nine

There is no company
when one assumes
unnecessary responsibility.

I push open the heavy
day care door—
made heavy to keep
children in or out—
and she tells me
to pull on my hood.
And when I reach
the open walkway,
its squares slippery
with ice under
new-fallen snow,
she tells me to take
tiny steps, to keep
my center of gravity.

I don’t have the freedom
to look around for
cat prints in the snow
or birds hidden in the
crevices of trees.
Listening to her warnings
I lose the beautiful
winter walk and
her tender company.

But I clasp the banister
in agreement to her persistence
all because I love her and am certain of her love for me:
A hefty price for love turned
frantically to fear.


Ellen Porter
1/11/08
Who Said a Good Girl Will Harbor No Addictions?

In the early morning hours
before sun starts the world spinning
in color
I take three or four books down
from the board and brick shelving
and nibble at a few poems from each.

I had finished with the
collection of Mary Oliver last week
and went on bravely to Audre Lorde
who is indeed a wonderful poet
but does not make my heart
lurch, my mouth fashion a smile, my galloping brain
slow to murmuring.

After days of pre-dawn desperation
I give in and pull a volume of Oliver
not even dusty yet from use.

I open to the beginning
inhale deeply like a swimmer
preparing to leap from pool side
to cold, liquid relief
flinging my body headlong with the first lines:

the sun, the grass and delphinium,
the dear, light-pink color of morning.

The dive, the submersion, the long glide
and then I rise to wind and water’s edge
gasping ocean air in cool resuscitation.