Ellen Porter
7/28/07
A Sodden Pile of Garbage
Just this morning
I remembered Job:
a good man
no sins left hidden
no ancestors to redeem
from wickedness.
Just a good man
sitting up the side of
a sodden, staining,
reeking pile of garbage and ash.
His skin mottled with sores
from days of stretching
supplicant
in the harsh, unfriendly sun.
His body tormented
and his soul
seemingly condemned
for no apparent reason.
He flailed, distressed,
searching for God’s elusive purpose.
And as I rise early
in my cancer-ridden body
to pick up pen and fine blank paper,
I wonder at pneumonia
robbing me of my share
of reasonable breath;
I wonder at the pain of recent
stones, passing sharp and cutting
through my kidney;
I wonder at the new mysterious pain
of shingles, straddling the nerve ways
of my back and side;
I wonder at my tooth,
broken as a mastodon’s
chipped from age and use.
I wonder all day long
about Job,
his haphazard patience, his hating love
of the only god to whom
he could pray.
Not fair—
the omnipotent sole god
turned against us.
Not fair—
I try to flick the bitterness away,
a spider web,
the deceptive beauty of ancient arachnid pattern,
sticky, unforgiving.
I try to flick it away
off my eager, tenacious fingers
and begin my search
for a different, reasonable god.
I step out into oblivion.
Ellen Porter
7/31/07
At Bay
The journey through this
cluttered, wild terrain
the pathway strewn with
fear and joy and exaltation
this journey buoys me up
fascinated by windward, unsuspected detritus.
My body holds the fear
the tender gifts at bay
one brief horror after another
one decorated birdsong
cradled, clay-formed, stuffed in waiting pockets,
held at bay.
And I wonder
what bay holds my delight
my terrors, sprung loose and trembling.
What bay is this—water, ice,
the sound of a neglected boat
left banging against the water-worn pier?
And what God wanders with me
knowing the paths I will follow
The tight strung corners I will turn?
Or maybe not knowing,
Maybe God follows along,
a bright and curious journeyer
caught up in the golden, the bleak,
the day’s terrible and brilliant surprises.
Ellen Porter
8/18/07
Greening
At dawn
I glimpse a fragile gift,
clumps of leaves
rather than distinct leaf
of sycamore and maple.
And, greatest gift of all,
not seeing
what future light will bring:
a white torn and plastic bag
caught these three years
in the upper, unreachable branches.
With the projector of sun against
the sweet wall of nature,
seeing,
I will remember how many million years
it will take for this bag—
these many bags, worldwide—
to disintegrate and to reintegrate
into this trembling, threatened, lovely, greening world.
Ellen Porter
5/13/07
Matins
Every morning before dawn
I wake to night bird song.
Now, after many early risings,
I recognize the tune
but do not know the singer.
At six
the neighborhood bells
ring the new day.
Chimes slip through open windows,
sidle under doors.
I do not need a clock.
My sisters puzzle over
my morning ritual.
But with bird song
and bells
how could I rest
my head on the pillow?
Ellen Porter
4/29/07
Renovation
Faith requires new vision
though vision
long held or nascent
guarantees nothing.
Still, walking into
newly fashioned chapel space—
wood and glass
trees and water—
freshly seen,
we stir toward the sacred.
We sing first alleluias
choirs tossing tones to each other
face to face
and up to clerestory sky.
Then our voices quiet,
their praises received,
and we eye each other
tentatively in silence.
The building walls
singing, echoing,
fling our alleluias in return
up through vibrant air.
Ellen Porter
4/5/07
Stability
It all works out in the end
Sister Charlotte explains
as she finishes cleaning the bathroom
though it is my turn.
Ranked several years my senior
she scrubs with a gentleness
I have not yet learned.
There will be an eternity
of cleaning days together,
she reminds me.
Stability.
In the diningroom
I sit with an older sister
alone at table.
She smiles in welcome
for the company.
Some days it feels like
an eternity of meals
she whispers.
Stability.
We process in festive spirit
into the chapel in pairs.
Bow to the altar.
Bow to Christ in each other.
And throughout, the cantor intones
The names of sisters long dead:
Benedict and Cornelia
Be with us
Augusta and Patricia
Be with us.
She calls,
A divining rod through eternity
A hundred souls at least.
All you holy women
come and be with us.
Stability.
Ellen Porter
5/15/07
Vision
I drink morning coffee
with eyes closed.
Habit leads my hand to the cup.
Then I stand beneath the shower
squinting tightly like a newborn
my fingers memorizing
each crevice and curve,
each body part.
At dawn
singing doxologies in sacred space
darkness caught behind my eyelids
I rise with harmonies
lifting, echoing,
against the stoney walls.
Though I would never choose
against the inexplicable gift of sight,
there is some
peculiar benefit
to seeing with the inner eye.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Ellen Porter
7/22/07
A Smooth Melancholy
With thirteen summers to my name
I sat on the hard black bench
playing, adagio, the smooth
melancholy of a Mozart sonata.
My dog, foaming where her red tongue
used to lap my face. Her body
still bearing life, trembling.
My father made the call and
readied himself, not with Mozart
but with the smell of sage on the
steep mountain slope behind the house.
As I played, my mother,
missing the ritual dance
my father and I performed,
called to me,
“Don’t you care at all?”
I didn’t answer but
played through to the end.
My father and I and my dog
bumbled into the car
and began her last trip into town.
And at the animal hospital
my father let me smell her
for a final time, and let me
feel her patient head against mine.
I did not go in
but my father held her
for her final breath.
Ellen Porter
8/9/07
Continuing Formation
Slouching around newly wiped dining room tables
we listen to a visiting teacher
on fire with Old Testament lore.
She speaks her surprises as much
with her hands and arms and torso
as with her constant, erudite tongue.
She tells us she can presuppose,
we being a roomful of Catholic religious,
that we already know certain basic truths
that she can leap into her treasures,
scattering facts like fireworks,
already halfway to her thesis’ proof.
But my eyes and soul wander
out the steamy windows,
shedding my biblical memories
like lines of water hurrying down a yellow, weatherproof coat
to stroll through the light falling rain, invincible,
watching the fawn, still spotted, still brave,
no eyes for my ghost,
frolicking under the summer laden apple trees.
Ellen Porter
7/27/07
Gratitude
Seven days
set aside
not for holy leisure or
sacred space
but as a celebration
of what we have given up.
No work or chores or promises to keep
but instead an emptiness
to be filled with books and naps,
resplendent meals and time
for sitting in the woods
just looking,
just listening
to the early morning whirr of insects
and birdsong.
And now those seven days
spent
the emptiness filled
with rabbits and the sudden red
of cardinals, flying,
rain-drenched maple and cottonwood.
The emptiness filled
and no going back to
change what embroiders
that spent time.
Tomorrow I will
return to paper work, telephones, errands,
full to overflowing
with rabbit whiskers
and rain.
Ellen Porter
4/30/07
Maggie
Cancer bloomed in her
like orchids
breast and ovary her gardens.
She held her fear gently
in both hands
watching blossoms open slowly.
And then surgery
cutting away each flowering strand
leaving no fertile loam.
As a gardener
turns under fallow ground
chemotherapy turned her soil impotent.
Treatment finished
she rubs her head
stubbles of a new crop of hair
and says, “It takes so long!”
And I whisper back
“A new healthy field.
You have been given years.”
Ellen Porter
8/30/07
Remembering
I do not yearn
for childhood again
but my soul,
broken open and molded
on ancient memories,
sometimes hovers, flitting
like a Mariposa butterfly
sure of its way home.
Memory and soul grow together
shape-shifting my essence.
I am that child, that teenager,
now this adult,
the sum of all that went before,
yet changed in the melding
to a person neither the child
nor I could recognize
save the trove of memories,
cocoon to chrysalis to wings,
that change me in remembering.
Ellen Porter
4/3/07
Sr. Estelle Marie
Sr. Estelle, child sized
but grown in argument and will.
Ninety some years old
a mind rooted in events
of long ago.
She rides the passenger seat
on the way to the dentist
and reads aloud each sign we pass.
(She has often complained of
total blindness
but that isn’t the case with road signs today.)
Railroad crossing, deaf child,
Burch’s peaches, ripe and sweet.
When we arrive at the office
she refuses at first
to leave the security of the car.
I urge her along and she comes,
never timid, in her own time.
Inside we watch a mother
in the waiting room
tending her six year old daughter.
The child climbs into her mother’s lap
and is enfolded in gentle love.
Sr. Estelle watches closely and
then dares to take the chance.
“Would you like to hold me, too?”
Her dentures clack in a mouth
grown child small.
Ellen Porter
8/2/07
Undistracted
There is nothing pleasant
about living in the present moment
when all that moment holds is pain.
But it is not true that’s all there is.
Besides, there are dirty socks under the bed
and silvery cobwebs up in the corner
dangling sticky and secure.
Still, my attention cannot leave
the one thing—
pain—
pulling me from a kindly dream.
What could have prevented the present concentration
allowing my mind to wander
to meander beyond the
cocoon of my body
the yellow ocher of these walls?
And then
all of it
the pain and socks and cobwebs
even the pinpoint focus of the present moment
first precludes and then yields
the anatomy of a poem.
7/22/07
A Smooth Melancholy
With thirteen summers to my name
I sat on the hard black bench
playing, adagio, the smooth
melancholy of a Mozart sonata.
My dog, foaming where her red tongue
used to lap my face. Her body
still bearing life, trembling.
My father made the call and
readied himself, not with Mozart
but with the smell of sage on the
steep mountain slope behind the house.
As I played, my mother,
missing the ritual dance
my father and I performed,
called to me,
“Don’t you care at all?”
I didn’t answer but
played through to the end.
My father and I and my dog
bumbled into the car
and began her last trip into town.
And at the animal hospital
my father let me smell her
for a final time, and let me
feel her patient head against mine.
I did not go in
but my father held her
for her final breath.
Ellen Porter
8/9/07
Continuing Formation
Slouching around newly wiped dining room tables
we listen to a visiting teacher
on fire with Old Testament lore.
She speaks her surprises as much
with her hands and arms and torso
as with her constant, erudite tongue.
She tells us she can presuppose,
we being a roomful of Catholic religious,
that we already know certain basic truths
that she can leap into her treasures,
scattering facts like fireworks,
already halfway to her thesis’ proof.
But my eyes and soul wander
out the steamy windows,
shedding my biblical memories
like lines of water hurrying down a yellow, weatherproof coat
to stroll through the light falling rain, invincible,
watching the fawn, still spotted, still brave,
no eyes for my ghost,
frolicking under the summer laden apple trees.
Ellen Porter
7/27/07
Gratitude
Seven days
set aside
not for holy leisure or
sacred space
but as a celebration
of what we have given up.
No work or chores or promises to keep
but instead an emptiness
to be filled with books and naps,
resplendent meals and time
for sitting in the woods
just looking,
just listening
to the early morning whirr of insects
and birdsong.
And now those seven days
spent
the emptiness filled
with rabbits and the sudden red
of cardinals, flying,
rain-drenched maple and cottonwood.
The emptiness filled
and no going back to
change what embroiders
that spent time.
Tomorrow I will
return to paper work, telephones, errands,
full to overflowing
with rabbit whiskers
and rain.
Ellen Porter
4/30/07
Maggie
Cancer bloomed in her
like orchids
breast and ovary her gardens.
She held her fear gently
in both hands
watching blossoms open slowly.
And then surgery
cutting away each flowering strand
leaving no fertile loam.
As a gardener
turns under fallow ground
chemotherapy turned her soil impotent.
Treatment finished
she rubs her head
stubbles of a new crop of hair
and says, “It takes so long!”
And I whisper back
“A new healthy field.
You have been given years.”
Ellen Porter
8/30/07
Remembering
I do not yearn
for childhood again
but my soul,
broken open and molded
on ancient memories,
sometimes hovers, flitting
like a Mariposa butterfly
sure of its way home.
Memory and soul grow together
shape-shifting my essence.
I am that child, that teenager,
now this adult,
the sum of all that went before,
yet changed in the melding
to a person neither the child
nor I could recognize
save the trove of memories,
cocoon to chrysalis to wings,
that change me in remembering.
Ellen Porter
4/3/07
Sr. Estelle Marie
Sr. Estelle, child sized
but grown in argument and will.
Ninety some years old
a mind rooted in events
of long ago.
She rides the passenger seat
on the way to the dentist
and reads aloud each sign we pass.
(She has often complained of
total blindness
but that isn’t the case with road signs today.)
Railroad crossing, deaf child,
Burch’s peaches, ripe and sweet.
When we arrive at the office
she refuses at first
to leave the security of the car.
I urge her along and she comes,
never timid, in her own time.
Inside we watch a mother
in the waiting room
tending her six year old daughter.
The child climbs into her mother’s lap
and is enfolded in gentle love.
Sr. Estelle watches closely and
then dares to take the chance.
“Would you like to hold me, too?”
Her dentures clack in a mouth
grown child small.
Ellen Porter
8/2/07
Undistracted
There is nothing pleasant
about living in the present moment
when all that moment holds is pain.
But it is not true that’s all there is.
Besides, there are dirty socks under the bed
and silvery cobwebs up in the corner
dangling sticky and secure.
Still, my attention cannot leave
the one thing—
pain—
pulling me from a kindly dream.
What could have prevented the present concentration
allowing my mind to wander
to meander beyond the
cocoon of my body
the yellow ocher of these walls?
And then
all of it
the pain and socks and cobwebs
even the pinpoint focus of the present moment
first precludes and then yields
the anatomy of a poem.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Ellen Porter
8/11/07
The New Cosmology
These days of prescribed education
allow me no time for solitude out of doors.
Cancer and shattered breath leave me napping
rather than hiking the woods.
I wonder how I am to learn
if there is no mud on my shoes or
leaves, abandoned haphazardly from
trees along the hermitage path
in the curls of my hair.
How can I learn without birdsong
or the quick sighting of rabbits,
whiskers twitching in anticipation
of what, I do not know?
The lecturer speaks of adapting
religious thinking to the new cosmology.
Her ideas make my heart quicken,
and I wonder how I can reach forward and adapt
if I am enclosed in this particular room
away from the new fertile cosmos.
I feel arteries excited, running amok
with wonderful, terrible, glacial ideas.
But how will they stay in my heart and my memory
even another day
unanchored by dirt and grass and the new sap rising?
Ellen Porter
6/14/07
Community Retreat
The monastery is
chiseled away by
lectio and prayer.
There are no visitors this week
hospitality exchanged
for quiet vigilance.
The monastics
like a river
meandering the halls
In silence.
Ellen Porter
7/6/07
Grace
A circle of women
powerful drums and fire.
One sets the rhythm
hollow and deep.
Others echo
one by one
magnifying in night air.
This circle
sixteen strong:
two crones
bringing ancient energy,
thirteen middle years
solid, honest, honed true,
and a four year old
uprooting spring.
It is the child’s initiation
into the woman’s world.
She doesn’t know that
as she leans against her mother,
crawls in grass
inspecting blade by green blade,
as she attempts to join
the rhythm of the group,
she doesn’t know
she is being taught
the circle’s wisdom.
Her mother worries
she will disturb.
Her grandmother
takes her on her lap
counting out the drum beats
the child imitating rhythm.
The others smile
accepting as a whole heart
the healing that
this evening brings:
this surprising vernal grace.
Ellen Porter
8/16/07
Losses
This spring, when I first rose early
to embrace the great poets,
their words so comfortable on the page,
and to test my own ink,
I didn’t know that with the summer dawn
the morning bird would no longer sing.
I had grown fond of that song, expectant,
but it took me days to realize its absence.
Yesterday, my sister announced
her difficult epiphany:
she will leave Lake Erie and
return with leaf brilliance
to Pacific places, west and north.
With her going,
she will gain eyes to watch
her granddaughter move
from four to five
and the child’s parents
growing gradually, patiently,
into adulthood.
And in this house
an artist is dying.
I try to remove myself—
his diminishment echoing
my own disease—
my cowardice begging solitude.
Of all these losses—
spring dying to summer,
my sister’s westward magnet,
the potter’s final breaths—
it is the missing birdsong
that breaks my heart.
Ellen Porter
6/4/07
Psalm in Darkness
My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will
the earth soul shine?
Day after day
I spar against the enemy.
I drench my shirts with sweat.
My eyes unfocus
with a faintness so close
I kneel down in homage
to the darkness.
My breath comes in panicked gulps;
my fluids burst, unbidden.
My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will the earth soul shine?
Today I rise late
And miss the morning bird song.
The sun has outrun me to the horizon.
Trees leafed out
but plastic bags
littering their branches.
Perhaps the earth soul shines
and I have missed it,
my spirit grasped by
the crook of my arm
still sleeping?
Ellen Porter
8/27/07
Sometimes After Death
Sometimes death sets
the dark world spinning,
a catalyst.
Your body, blest and forgiven
just settling under
fresh turned, pungent dirt.
I thought it was finished,
that dark pod of
fear and sorrow.
But as you settle in the ground
new darkness fills
your empty hollow.
Now I cannot breathe earth’s atmosphere
but must settle for tanks of processed air.
And even then,
as I rise from my bed
I gasp like one following closely
on your silent heels.
And the sentinel pine,
struck by lighting
in yesterday’s storm,
left leaning,
its life or death
waiting decision
by one who understands
the anatomy of a tree,
but who never loved this particular pine
as I have.
And the friend whose
birthday we feted tonight
with singing, laughter, wine and candles.
Did she feel the darkness settle
where your chair should have been
pulled up at table?
Ellen Porter
8/4/07
The Snake and Condescension
Late spring and
acting like summer
the trail by the creek
stretches dusty dry and
cougar ready.
But today I choose the upper way
the slope steep enough to
test my legs and breath.
Suddenly,
halfway up the ridge
there is the death rattle
of a snake
black as cooled embers
waiting on the trail.
I jump back
some ancient guttural sound
of disgust and fear
issuing deep in my throat.
And then the moment of paralysis:
I watch its wicked eyes,
it waits to fathom its future.
Aloud, but quietly, I pray
to mother earth
to let her creature
give me passage.
We wait, and then
proud but forgiving
the rattlesnake uncoils
and slips into the
fragrance of white sage.
8/11/07
The New Cosmology
These days of prescribed education
allow me no time for solitude out of doors.
Cancer and shattered breath leave me napping
rather than hiking the woods.
I wonder how I am to learn
if there is no mud on my shoes or
leaves, abandoned haphazardly from
trees along the hermitage path
in the curls of my hair.
How can I learn without birdsong
or the quick sighting of rabbits,
whiskers twitching in anticipation
of what, I do not know?
The lecturer speaks of adapting
religious thinking to the new cosmology.
Her ideas make my heart quicken,
and I wonder how I can reach forward and adapt
if I am enclosed in this particular room
away from the new fertile cosmos.
I feel arteries excited, running amok
with wonderful, terrible, glacial ideas.
But how will they stay in my heart and my memory
even another day
unanchored by dirt and grass and the new sap rising?
Ellen Porter
6/14/07
Community Retreat
The monastery is
chiseled away by
lectio and prayer.
There are no visitors this week
hospitality exchanged
for quiet vigilance.
The monastics
like a river
meandering the halls
In silence.
Ellen Porter
7/6/07
Grace
A circle of women
powerful drums and fire.
One sets the rhythm
hollow and deep.
Others echo
one by one
magnifying in night air.
This circle
sixteen strong:
two crones
bringing ancient energy,
thirteen middle years
solid, honest, honed true,
and a four year old
uprooting spring.
It is the child’s initiation
into the woman’s world.
She doesn’t know that
as she leans against her mother,
crawls in grass
inspecting blade by green blade,
as she attempts to join
the rhythm of the group,
she doesn’t know
she is being taught
the circle’s wisdom.
Her mother worries
she will disturb.
Her grandmother
takes her on her lap
counting out the drum beats
the child imitating rhythm.
The others smile
accepting as a whole heart
the healing that
this evening brings:
this surprising vernal grace.
Ellen Porter
8/16/07
Losses
This spring, when I first rose early
to embrace the great poets,
their words so comfortable on the page,
and to test my own ink,
I didn’t know that with the summer dawn
the morning bird would no longer sing.
I had grown fond of that song, expectant,
but it took me days to realize its absence.
Yesterday, my sister announced
her difficult epiphany:
she will leave Lake Erie and
return with leaf brilliance
to Pacific places, west and north.
With her going,
she will gain eyes to watch
her granddaughter move
from four to five
and the child’s parents
growing gradually, patiently,
into adulthood.
And in this house
an artist is dying.
I try to remove myself—
his diminishment echoing
my own disease—
my cowardice begging solitude.
Of all these losses—
spring dying to summer,
my sister’s westward magnet,
the potter’s final breaths—
it is the missing birdsong
that breaks my heart.
Ellen Porter
6/4/07
Psalm in Darkness
My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will
the earth soul shine?
Day after day
I spar against the enemy.
I drench my shirts with sweat.
My eyes unfocus
with a faintness so close
I kneel down in homage
to the darkness.
My breath comes in panicked gulps;
my fluids burst, unbidden.
My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will the earth soul shine?
Today I rise late
And miss the morning bird song.
The sun has outrun me to the horizon.
Trees leafed out
but plastic bags
littering their branches.
Perhaps the earth soul shines
and I have missed it,
my spirit grasped by
the crook of my arm
still sleeping?
Ellen Porter
8/27/07
Sometimes After Death
Sometimes death sets
the dark world spinning,
a catalyst.
Your body, blest and forgiven
just settling under
fresh turned, pungent dirt.
I thought it was finished,
that dark pod of
fear and sorrow.
But as you settle in the ground
new darkness fills
your empty hollow.
Now I cannot breathe earth’s atmosphere
but must settle for tanks of processed air.
And even then,
as I rise from my bed
I gasp like one following closely
on your silent heels.
And the sentinel pine,
struck by lighting
in yesterday’s storm,
left leaning,
its life or death
waiting decision
by one who understands
the anatomy of a tree,
but who never loved this particular pine
as I have.
And the friend whose
birthday we feted tonight
with singing, laughter, wine and candles.
Did she feel the darkness settle
where your chair should have been
pulled up at table?
Ellen Porter
8/4/07
The Snake and Condescension
Late spring and
acting like summer
the trail by the creek
stretches dusty dry and
cougar ready.
But today I choose the upper way
the slope steep enough to
test my legs and breath.
Suddenly,
halfway up the ridge
there is the death rattle
of a snake
black as cooled embers
waiting on the trail.
I jump back
some ancient guttural sound
of disgust and fear
issuing deep in my throat.
And then the moment of paralysis:
I watch its wicked eyes,
it waits to fathom its future.
Aloud, but quietly, I pray
to mother earth
to let her creature
give me passage.
We wait, and then
proud but forgiving
the rattlesnake uncoils
and slips into the
fragrance of white sage.
Monday, December 17, 2007
Ellen Porter
8/20/07
A Death in the House
A death in the house
turns familiar curves and halls akimbo.
The walls, leaning against the vacuum space
where a breathing man had lain,
nearly touch the floor,
unresisted by his expirations.
I do not recognize the play of light,
the whisper of heated air
finding secret entrance
into unfamiliar space.
I do not recognize myself
in this new environment,
no longer have your eyes to mirror mine.
I set out on reconnaissance
to redefine, to rediscover who I am
in your awful absence.
Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Colors and Words
Across a widening horizon
a country apart
you call to see
how I am dying.
Slowly,
I answer,
with ample time
for poetry.
You say
you are retired now
and spend your days
painting in new and vivid design.
Each of us
with graced and empty time
tend unseasonable joy
on days we
lay down metaphor or oils.
Ellen Porter
8/19/2007
Global Warming
The warm darkness of summer
Pennsylvania nights
makes complacent the cold shadows
of other places, made in mystery,
sustained, though barely, through neglect.
The polar ice cap
slipping away like snow under
the faucet of childhood alleys.
The warm darkness of unguarded ozone
melting away the icy sheets
deep and death-dealing;
the romping home of polar bears
left swimming, left catching the sleek,
benevolent bodies of walrus and seal
and no place left to haul out
and make a feast.
Ellen Porter
6/5/07
Lagoon
Sharing the lagoon
swimming with a snapping turtle
I slowly back away.
It paddles my direction
its neck extended
threatening with thick sharp beak.
I wonder what lunch
It thinks I am.
My toes grow muddy
beneath me as
I climb the slippery bank
and remove myself
as terrapin cuisine.
Ellen Porter
7/16/07
I Remember Only One Thing
Fifty years ago I was seven, not precocious but freshly shining with a child’s pure and gracious wisdom. From California to Nebraska we drove through elk and buffalo herds, through a migration of desert terrapin stretching the golden range to the sweet unending boundaries east and west. We reached my father’s home, his parents, his closely guarded history. I opened my eyes and saw. I remember only one thing about my grandpa. It is a genuine memory and not a tale told down through the generations. There is no story here to tell but only a still life, black and white. I am standing on the sidewalk at dusk looking back at the white-washed boards of my grandparents’ house. Grandpa opens the door and steps into the wind of the front porch. I see a strong gust snatch his hat, round and brown with curving brim. And it sailed through the dusty air and he ran after it, catching up to it on the green and brittle grass. That is all I remember of grandpa alive.
Two years later I saw him dead, laid out in the gladiola-sweetened air of the front parlor. My mother has told me the story so it is not my own memory save the fragrance of funeral flowers. My grandma snatched me from my mother’s side, lifted me coffin- high and ordered me to see my grandpa—no hat, no pipe, no cribbage deck—I did not recognize him. And my mother never forgave my brief abduction. After the burial, before the dawn, we climbed into the car and went in search of new life stretching across the prairies, death absorbed until it was invisible until I remembered only the herds and the hat careening in the wind.
Ellen Porter
6/30/07
Small in Body
She read it in the paper
“the diminutive Sr. Mary.”
She fluffed up like a baby wren
to full stature and demanded
what does that mean?
It means you’re short
I reassured her.
Oh, and she relaxed
back to normal size.
Small in body
compassion overflowing
she keeps the soup kitchen running.
Everyone who arrives hungry
leaves with satisfied belly.
Table by table she visits
with the guests.
They count on her love
and love her in return.
One evening,
hot and humid,
leaving everyone irritable
two of the men started arguing.
Their voices got loud, their fists clenched.
They were ready to fight.
Sr. Mary stepped between them,
each man twice her size.
She scolded them with no condescension.
The fists relaxed, the men stood apart.
Three people converted.
Ellen Porter
7/25/07
The Sentinel
I have not dared to go see it yet,
since the storm,
the sentinel pine, towering, leaning,
sheltering the sunken garden.
So suddenly,
yesterday it was healthy
bearing cones, ornaments hanging,
brown and seeded from greening fingers.
And today it is dead, those seeds
its only hope of future generation.
The storm was unexpected
centered in this garden, in this home.
The lightening blackened a clock on the wall,
asserting its power, stopping time on edge.
But worse, striking, it burned through
the heart of the pine.
Branches hang loose
making it dangerous to lie beneath it,
staring into its shadows, its lights.
And what of the shade it offers;
what of the darkened corner of
garden where small animals
make their homes, their hunting grounds?
And, oh, the birds.
8/20/07
A Death in the House
A death in the house
turns familiar curves and halls akimbo.
The walls, leaning against the vacuum space
where a breathing man had lain,
nearly touch the floor,
unresisted by his expirations.
I do not recognize the play of light,
the whisper of heated air
finding secret entrance
into unfamiliar space.
I do not recognize myself
in this new environment,
no longer have your eyes to mirror mine.
I set out on reconnaissance
to redefine, to rediscover who I am
in your awful absence.
Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Colors and Words
Across a widening horizon
a country apart
you call to see
how I am dying.
Slowly,
I answer,
with ample time
for poetry.
You say
you are retired now
and spend your days
painting in new and vivid design.
Each of us
with graced and empty time
tend unseasonable joy
on days we
lay down metaphor or oils.
Ellen Porter
8/19/2007
Global Warming
The warm darkness of summer
Pennsylvania nights
makes complacent the cold shadows
of other places, made in mystery,
sustained, though barely, through neglect.
The polar ice cap
slipping away like snow under
the faucet of childhood alleys.
The warm darkness of unguarded ozone
melting away the icy sheets
deep and death-dealing;
the romping home of polar bears
left swimming, left catching the sleek,
benevolent bodies of walrus and seal
and no place left to haul out
and make a feast.
Ellen Porter
6/5/07
Lagoon
Sharing the lagoon
swimming with a snapping turtle
I slowly back away.
It paddles my direction
its neck extended
threatening with thick sharp beak.
I wonder what lunch
It thinks I am.
My toes grow muddy
beneath me as
I climb the slippery bank
and remove myself
as terrapin cuisine.
Ellen Porter
7/16/07
I Remember Only One Thing
Fifty years ago I was seven, not precocious but freshly shining with a child’s pure and gracious wisdom. From California to Nebraska we drove through elk and buffalo herds, through a migration of desert terrapin stretching the golden range to the sweet unending boundaries east and west. We reached my father’s home, his parents, his closely guarded history. I opened my eyes and saw. I remember only one thing about my grandpa. It is a genuine memory and not a tale told down through the generations. There is no story here to tell but only a still life, black and white. I am standing on the sidewalk at dusk looking back at the white-washed boards of my grandparents’ house. Grandpa opens the door and steps into the wind of the front porch. I see a strong gust snatch his hat, round and brown with curving brim. And it sailed through the dusty air and he ran after it, catching up to it on the green and brittle grass. That is all I remember of grandpa alive.
Two years later I saw him dead, laid out in the gladiola-sweetened air of the front parlor. My mother has told me the story so it is not my own memory save the fragrance of funeral flowers. My grandma snatched me from my mother’s side, lifted me coffin- high and ordered me to see my grandpa—no hat, no pipe, no cribbage deck—I did not recognize him. And my mother never forgave my brief abduction. After the burial, before the dawn, we climbed into the car and went in search of new life stretching across the prairies, death absorbed until it was invisible until I remembered only the herds and the hat careening in the wind.
Ellen Porter
6/30/07
Small in Body
She read it in the paper
“the diminutive Sr. Mary.”
She fluffed up like a baby wren
to full stature and demanded
what does that mean?
It means you’re short
I reassured her.
Oh, and she relaxed
back to normal size.
Small in body
compassion overflowing
she keeps the soup kitchen running.
Everyone who arrives hungry
leaves with satisfied belly.
Table by table she visits
with the guests.
They count on her love
and love her in return.
One evening,
hot and humid,
leaving everyone irritable
two of the men started arguing.
Their voices got loud, their fists clenched.
They were ready to fight.
Sr. Mary stepped between them,
each man twice her size.
She scolded them with no condescension.
The fists relaxed, the men stood apart.
Three people converted.
Ellen Porter
7/25/07
The Sentinel
I have not dared to go see it yet,
since the storm,
the sentinel pine, towering, leaning,
sheltering the sunken garden.
So suddenly,
yesterday it was healthy
bearing cones, ornaments hanging,
brown and seeded from greening fingers.
And today it is dead, those seeds
its only hope of future generation.
The storm was unexpected
centered in this garden, in this home.
The lightening blackened a clock on the wall,
asserting its power, stopping time on edge.
But worse, striking, it burned through
the heart of the pine.
Branches hang loose
making it dangerous to lie beneath it,
staring into its shadows, its lights.
And what of the shade it offers;
what of the darkened corner of
garden where small animals
make their homes, their hunting grounds?
And, oh, the birds.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)