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.