Ellen Porter
4/15/07
Caryn, My Sister
She straddles the country.
Her body and half her mind
find living space on Lake Erie.
But her soul and the mind of her heart
belong in the west:
the northwest, the Pacific.
It is her granddaughter
acting as magnet
the urgency of watching
two become three become four.
And here in the east
I am oh so slowly, dying.
She wants, needs to
bide her time with me
as helpmate
assisting with showers
gathering things from floor to floor
as my oxygen tether
reaches its endpoint.
She cleans my room,
keeps oxygen from flame,
drives to get the next drug.
She says she feels useless
yet to me she lightens
an impossible load.
I am torn for her
stretched east and west.
My love wants her happy
her own home on the wet and stormy coast
oddly called Pacific.
And I think of losing
her close heart and want her to stay.
But east or west
she must test the magnet pull
and choose her own direction.
Ellen Porter
6/18/07
Friends
California and Kentucky
meet in Erie, Pennsylvania.
She marvels at
the coincidence and
names it a miracle.
I look at the pattern,
mouth agape like
an idiot,
and I, too, push
my finger into the plot
and stir.
Perhaps it is a miracle.
Twelve years now and
our friendship flourishes.
Yes, there are times
we reject each other:
blame or anger or withdrawal.
But then we remember
the wonder of it all,
discard our disputes
and bow to each other
in holy surprise.
This is the miracle.
Ellen Porter
6/26/07
Introspectively, Subjectively, My Self
I do not think of death anymore
but of disability.
They say the tumor has shrunken
a sea anemone
probed with a single finger
pulling in around itself
prickling, greedy.
I am grateful
do not misunderstand.
But I am left to deal with the residual.
Tethered to oxygen
I am restricted in my movement
room to room.
The tubing knots around my feet—
a lethargic snake
too awkward to coil.
Yet without it
I am left short of breath, panicky,
urine threatening to burst unbidden.
And there is the fatigue:
A lethargy I don’t trust.
Is it a drop in some vital function
or is it sloth, hanging loosely
upside down
waiting for some entertainment
worthy of effort?
I try not to whine;
I hope I merely explain.
It is not death I battle
but the fragments of living
I am left with
these warm summer days.
Ellen Porter
7/5/07
Pain Surprises
Pain surprises for no reason
Toes, heels and knee
A pill in the stomach.
When will it reach my feet?
Ellen Porter
6/15/07
Simplicity
She was born in
the southern hills of Pennsylvania
no plumbing, no lights
the call of God in her soul.
She threaded the country
looking for a home
found a community that nourished animals
and joined for awhile.
Then traveling on
she visited our monastery
and stayed.
Today she has been
our sister for many years.
She walks, head bowed, eyes downcast
in holy obedience
through monastery halls and grounds
delighting in deer and daffodils
and the deep solitude of the woods.
She never meets the
greeting glance of another.
When she talks,
rare and startling,
she is likely to show surprise
that she is recognized.
She knows no one’s name.
But once
at the funeral of the Polish mother
of a monastic
she was again called by God.
As the casket turned for its
final journey from the chapel,
she walked unbidden
unexpected
from her pew
and standing quietly
one hand resting on the pall
she sang
untrained
captivating
unaccompanied
an old Polish hymn.
Such courage
such generosity
issuing from her silent,
profound simplicity.
Ellen Porter
7/26/07
The Monastery Grounds
For three days now the booted, ball-capped men met outside my window. Mostly they stood and watched a piece of roped off grass growing, their imaginations of a two story, vacation home for the sisters already urging the future close. I wondered when they would begin to dig. A rabbit ran close, leaving its safe places under tree branches, under the boardwalk, to look carefully at this piece of land, newly set apart. And then the shovel, tractor-like and noisy, its huge maw breaking ground, digging, leaving these first jagged scars. The lawn, comfortable, familiar with its previous ground, lets go with grassy fingers. I yearn for simplicity, grieve this unnecessary piece of monastic progress, this confiscated bit of rabbit space.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Ellen Porter
5/7/07
California Live Oak
He had a farmer’s heart,
my father,
but gave up the land
to support a family.
Selling insurance
grieved his spirit
so he bought a house
on an acre of
California dry land with
a three hundred year old oak
for shelter and climbing.
He cultivated orchids,
hung them in mossy baskets
from the sturdy limbs.
Raised night blooming epiphytes,
Delighting in their dark perfume.
He sold insurance and he excelled,
but he tended his soul’s need.
Now, years later,
he is dead at ninety-one.
The new people
(the man always wanted
to live in this valley)
watered the oak faithfully:
a drought resistant indigenous species.
And in time,
with roots soaked through and ruined,
it toppled, thunder loud and graceful.
The new people missed the shade;
the daughters missed their climbing space.
And unable to assuage their guilt
or to imagine future years of growth
in another tree,
quietly one night
they packed up their lives
and moved away.
Ellen Porter
4/24/07
Free Fall
I’ve not been one who
enjoys being in control of my life.
Rather, I have delighted in
watching things unfold.
I’ve held on by my fingertips
to what seems to belong to me:
a new acquaintance
a new job
a new place to put down roots
and live.
But now, still in middle age
sick as a nightmare
I am losing control in other ways,
bodily ways.
I can’t breathe without
a canister of oxygen.
I can’t walk the stairs.
I can still choose what I eat,
but am losing control of
its elimination.
There is no pride left
in watching things unfold,
no delight.
Just a bitter pitiful cry of
What next?
How much more?
Why now?
Ellen Porter
9/9/07
In a Field
In a field, sitting on a rock
cool and smooth in this early summer dawn,
I try to spin the memories of my childhood,
the stories in a web.
I remember the little things more clearly than the great:
brushing the thick coat of my
first border collie, her tail wagging,
her tongue finding my face,
climbing the oak tree out front and spying in
the picture window—
a perfect vantage point, but nothing to see—
hiking alone the hills and creeks,
smelling California winter and, after a sudden rain,
smelling the pungent wild tobacco and bushes
whose names I never knew.
The great things tangle in my mind
with other people’s stories
so I no longer know what is true:
the flood that claimed our house—
unlike Noah, we had no place to float—
the wild fires, my uncle’s death.
I wonder, sitting here on the rock in the field,
if it was a happy childhood.
I take the small green box from my pocket,
carefully pry up the lid,
poke my nose all the way in
and smell white sage.
I spit on it releasing its full scent
with my body’s moisture.
My memories grow bold, they clarify,
they take me back and bring me forward.
That pungency promises
sweet happiness as a child,
and now,
life complicated by pain,
I know by the odor of sage
that happiness
holds me comforted now:
a healing balm
captured in the little box,
blooming in my soul.
Ellen Porter
7/17/07
On Reading Mary Oliver
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
8/15/07
Shingles
Shingles should be left for roofs
not for measured rash
cascading down the nerve pathway
lifting pain to a new form of vengeance:
sharp and stabbing as a blade
bearing a small amulet
crafted on a bone-white hilt
or the slow, constant ache of
walking, searing, hip deep.
I twist in my chair
lurching for comfort and
finding only a stunning surprise:
the riddled friction of nerve and bone.
Defeated, I sip morphia
and wait to return
pain free though rummy
to the task of verse—
clarity of words forsaken,
a poem resting on an alien axis.
Ellen Porter
5/21/07
The Hammock
Next door, behind the house
and sunken to secret levels,
the garden.
Spring and summer
permit my hammock
tucked away between wall and tree
dappled in shade.
Awkward, I sit or fall,
sidle to the center.
And then I relax
to let eyes and heart explore:
rose bushes in leaf, violets
and Johnny-jump-ups carpeting beneath,
lilac, wisteria and purple columbine.
Oh, and the trees!
One in the garden’s center
round and full—leaves full on and greening.
In the corner, a sentinel pine rises 80 feet,
catches the wind,
bends and twists in healthy flexibility.
I lie in the hammock.
The wind finds purchase and
rocks me side to side.
I hang on with fists and feet.
Perfectly balanced
wind the only music,
my body sways.
Ellen Porter
1/4/08
Fear and Trepidation
You awaken me
an hour after I am accustomed to rise.
The second time you call my name
I hear the fear of death in your voice.
I am dying, yes,
but slowly,
and there is still
a lot of life left
in these bones and flesh.
Do not worry,
approaching me on tiptoe.
I will give a warning
as cancer, quiet, waning full
calls me to new and
ever more wondrous
pasture.
5/7/07
California Live Oak
He had a farmer’s heart,
my father,
but gave up the land
to support a family.
Selling insurance
grieved his spirit
so he bought a house
on an acre of
California dry land with
a three hundred year old oak
for shelter and climbing.
He cultivated orchids,
hung them in mossy baskets
from the sturdy limbs.
Raised night blooming epiphytes,
Delighting in their dark perfume.
He sold insurance and he excelled,
but he tended his soul’s need.
Now, years later,
he is dead at ninety-one.
The new people
(the man always wanted
to live in this valley)
watered the oak faithfully:
a drought resistant indigenous species.
And in time,
with roots soaked through and ruined,
it toppled, thunder loud and graceful.
The new people missed the shade;
the daughters missed their climbing space.
And unable to assuage their guilt
or to imagine future years of growth
in another tree,
quietly one night
they packed up their lives
and moved away.
Ellen Porter
4/24/07
Free Fall
I’ve not been one who
enjoys being in control of my life.
Rather, I have delighted in
watching things unfold.
I’ve held on by my fingertips
to what seems to belong to me:
a new acquaintance
a new job
a new place to put down roots
and live.
But now, still in middle age
sick as a nightmare
I am losing control in other ways,
bodily ways.
I can’t breathe without
a canister of oxygen.
I can’t walk the stairs.
I can still choose what I eat,
but am losing control of
its elimination.
There is no pride left
in watching things unfold,
no delight.
Just a bitter pitiful cry of
What next?
How much more?
Why now?
Ellen Porter
9/9/07
In a Field
In a field, sitting on a rock
cool and smooth in this early summer dawn,
I try to spin the memories of my childhood,
the stories in a web.
I remember the little things more clearly than the great:
brushing the thick coat of my
first border collie, her tail wagging,
her tongue finding my face,
climbing the oak tree out front and spying in
the picture window—
a perfect vantage point, but nothing to see—
hiking alone the hills and creeks,
smelling California winter and, after a sudden rain,
smelling the pungent wild tobacco and bushes
whose names I never knew.
The great things tangle in my mind
with other people’s stories
so I no longer know what is true:
the flood that claimed our house—
unlike Noah, we had no place to float—
the wild fires, my uncle’s death.
I wonder, sitting here on the rock in the field,
if it was a happy childhood.
I take the small green box from my pocket,
carefully pry up the lid,
poke my nose all the way in
and smell white sage.
I spit on it releasing its full scent
with my body’s moisture.
My memories grow bold, they clarify,
they take me back and bring me forward.
That pungency promises
sweet happiness as a child,
and now,
life complicated by pain,
I know by the odor of sage
that happiness
holds me comforted now:
a healing balm
captured in the little box,
blooming in my soul.
Ellen Porter
7/17/07
On Reading Mary Oliver
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
8/15/07
Shingles
Shingles should be left for roofs
not for measured rash
cascading down the nerve pathway
lifting pain to a new form of vengeance:
sharp and stabbing as a blade
bearing a small amulet
crafted on a bone-white hilt
or the slow, constant ache of
walking, searing, hip deep.
I twist in my chair
lurching for comfort and
finding only a stunning surprise:
the riddled friction of nerve and bone.
Defeated, I sip morphia
and wait to return
pain free though rummy
to the task of verse—
clarity of words forsaken,
a poem resting on an alien axis.
Ellen Porter
5/21/07
The Hammock
Next door, behind the house
and sunken to secret levels,
the garden.
Spring and summer
permit my hammock
tucked away between wall and tree
dappled in shade.
Awkward, I sit or fall,
sidle to the center.
And then I relax
to let eyes and heart explore:
rose bushes in leaf, violets
and Johnny-jump-ups carpeting beneath,
lilac, wisteria and purple columbine.
Oh, and the trees!
One in the garden’s center
round and full—leaves full on and greening.
In the corner, a sentinel pine rises 80 feet,
catches the wind,
bends and twists in healthy flexibility.
I lie in the hammock.
The wind finds purchase and
rocks me side to side.
I hang on with fists and feet.
Perfectly balanced
wind the only music,
my body sways.
Ellen Porter
1/4/08
Fear and Trepidation
You awaken me
an hour after I am accustomed to rise.
The second time you call my name
I hear the fear of death in your voice.
I am dying, yes,
but slowly,
and there is still
a lot of life left
in these bones and flesh.
Do not worry,
approaching me on tiptoe.
I will give a warning
as cancer, quiet, waning full
calls me to new and
ever more wondrous
pasture.
Thursday, January 24, 2008
Ellen Porter
8/14/07
Brother Thomas, Potter II.
Brother Thomas is dying
in this house today,
trading fired porcelain
for groaning breath,
still the artist
always the potter.
I reach out to frame a poem
to capture the elusive word,
while he, with fine-sketched bone
and wasting skin,
ever in solitude,
brings forth
his ultimate firing.
Ellen Porter
6/10/07
For His Daughter, Anne
Will’s resurrection came early.
He planned to be with us at Easter,
his family gathered round,
Eucharist and alleluias
the center of the day.
But grinning he rose
no brace or cane
his back as straight
as a forger’s iron.
He rose two weeks early.
His daughters and sons
twined themselves around each other—
orphans now—
their mother dead only a year.
They planned the psalms and scripture
for the holy day of remembrance.
But all held reluctance
in their souls.
He rose two weeks early,
jubilant,
leaving Easter alleluias
silent in their throats.
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 in retrospect.
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
5/3/07
Oblation
She has graced our office
two years
and I do not know her title.
But I know the
shape of her spirit.
The phone insists
and she answers
pleasant, hospitable
speaking to monk and nun, solicitor
in the same easy breath:
a true Benedictine.
Day after day
she frowns at her computer
works simplicity on the keys.
(I have tried and failed
to access that machine
leaving frustration lingering on the screen
a prismed, oily cloud.)
But it is the other things,
smaller, perhaps, loving
that douse me in surprise.
She brings coffee
when she sees my need
not as servile feminine or maid
but as quiet, gracious friend.
She speaks of her lover,
a woman, unafraid,
with no apology
offering freedom
to like-hearted friends.
And in miraculous spring
there is the wonder of violets,
clutched in loose fist,
moist towels
awaiting water
from the tiny vase.
Caught by her efficiency
and touched by her grace,
I acknowledge my utter gratitude.
Ellen Porter
6/22/07
She is Electric
She touches fingers with ambassadors
speaks to the women of the nations.
Her time is metered.
Jerusalem finds her weeping,
weeping with Palestinians and Israelis alike.
She blankets the sparks of hate.
There is no world shadow
she dares not bring to light.
Her body knows the toll
of political exposure.
Illness is the premium--
this time painful, invasive, surgical--
and recovering
she is only the sister next door.
She entertains her well-intentioned visitors
with stories, jokes and the absurd.
She pirates the attention.
And there is a third persona
tempered by tears
energized by laughter.
She is mediator, counselor, friend.
When she listens
she is electric
each cell focusing in absolute concentration
on the words, the intimations of the other.
The energy builds
as she sinks her feet
deeply into God.
Political weathervane
casual trickster
deep-seated friend.
How long can she balance
the burden of division?
Ellen Porter
6/29/07
Tendrils of a Poem
An hour before dawn
too dark to trace the outlines
of the room
or the lost words of a poem, unwritten
I sit rocking
awaiting the epiphany of first light.
Outside my window
open wide before
the treasures of summer—
to release them or
to let them in
I am not certain—
tendrils of a poem
caught loosely in its beak
the morning bird sings.
Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Yesterday the maple tree
Yesterday the maple tree
watched and welcomed the potter
strolling to his studio and back.
It knew his shuffling steps
his hat pulled earward against
heat or cold.
It knew his company.
Today the maple tree
stands waiting for his glimpse—
its leaves summer soft, turned
inward with the promise of rain.
It will go on living,
its leaves, great branches,
great old hollow where the
breath of raccoon lingers.
But it will wait long,
not realizing this August evening
that, pushed and pulled
upon a gurney, blanketed in his final coolness,
he will not pass this way again.
8/14/07
Brother Thomas, Potter II.
Brother Thomas is dying
in this house today,
trading fired porcelain
for groaning breath,
still the artist
always the potter.
I reach out to frame a poem
to capture the elusive word,
while he, with fine-sketched bone
and wasting skin,
ever in solitude,
brings forth
his ultimate firing.
Ellen Porter
6/10/07
For His Daughter, Anne
Will’s resurrection came early.
He planned to be with us at Easter,
his family gathered round,
Eucharist and alleluias
the center of the day.
But grinning he rose
no brace or cane
his back as straight
as a forger’s iron.
He rose two weeks early.
His daughters and sons
twined themselves around each other—
orphans now—
their mother dead only a year.
They planned the psalms and scripture
for the holy day of remembrance.
But all held reluctance
in their souls.
He rose two weeks early,
jubilant,
leaving Easter alleluias
silent in their throats.
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 in retrospect.
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
5/3/07
Oblation
She has graced our office
two years
and I do not know her title.
But I know the
shape of her spirit.
The phone insists
and she answers
pleasant, hospitable
speaking to monk and nun, solicitor
in the same easy breath:
a true Benedictine.
Day after day
she frowns at her computer
works simplicity on the keys.
(I have tried and failed
to access that machine
leaving frustration lingering on the screen
a prismed, oily cloud.)
But it is the other things,
smaller, perhaps, loving
that douse me in surprise.
She brings coffee
when she sees my need
not as servile feminine or maid
but as quiet, gracious friend.
She speaks of her lover,
a woman, unafraid,
with no apology
offering freedom
to like-hearted friends.
And in miraculous spring
there is the wonder of violets,
clutched in loose fist,
moist towels
awaiting water
from the tiny vase.
Caught by her efficiency
and touched by her grace,
I acknowledge my utter gratitude.
Ellen Porter
6/22/07
She is Electric
She touches fingers with ambassadors
speaks to the women of the nations.
Her time is metered.
Jerusalem finds her weeping,
weeping with Palestinians and Israelis alike.
She blankets the sparks of hate.
There is no world shadow
she dares not bring to light.
Her body knows the toll
of political exposure.
Illness is the premium--
this time painful, invasive, surgical--
and recovering
she is only the sister next door.
She entertains her well-intentioned visitors
with stories, jokes and the absurd.
She pirates the attention.
And there is a third persona
tempered by tears
energized by laughter.
She is mediator, counselor, friend.
When she listens
she is electric
each cell focusing in absolute concentration
on the words, the intimations of the other.
The energy builds
as she sinks her feet
deeply into God.
Political weathervane
casual trickster
deep-seated friend.
How long can she balance
the burden of division?
Ellen Porter
6/29/07
Tendrils of a Poem
An hour before dawn
too dark to trace the outlines
of the room
or the lost words of a poem, unwritten
I sit rocking
awaiting the epiphany of first light.
Outside my window
open wide before
the treasures of summer—
to release them or
to let them in
I am not certain—
tendrils of a poem
caught loosely in its beak
the morning bird sings.
Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Yesterday the maple tree
Yesterday the maple tree
watched and welcomed the potter
strolling to his studio and back.
It knew his shuffling steps
his hat pulled earward against
heat or cold.
It knew his company.
Today the maple tree
stands waiting for his glimpse—
its leaves summer soft, turned
inward with the promise of rain.
It will go on living,
its leaves, great branches,
great old hollow where the
breath of raccoon lingers.
But it will wait long,
not realizing this August evening
that, pushed and pulled
upon a gurney, blanketed in his final coolness,
he will not pass this way again.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Ellen Porter
8/7/07
Brother Thomas, Potter I.
Your hands
the miraculous modelers
of clay, remain long
and thin and beautiful
while the sum of your essence,
body and soul,
splinters like dry wood,
thirsting for rain.
It is the antithesis of
clay to porcelain.
Secret glazes have
fashioned pots
inimitable
their value in museums
their sacredness in your heart
keep them the sole
gift of your flaming spirit.
Now cancer captivates your body.
Today you cannot sit at your wheel
and today you cannot lift virgin clay.
You rest in your studio
waiting as malignant cells
take your magnificent dreams
and, pressing them earthbound,
forbid their transformation to miracle from clay.
Ellen Porter
7/30/07
Fivefold Gift
These eyes, opening early
blinking moistly against new light
one eye squinted closed to
bring the images sharp and focused.
Even now, before sunrise defines
what lies in darkness
my vision waits, lurking to bring
shadow to form.
And my skin trembles with
early morning air, moving soft
and often.
My ears wait for
birdsong, a sense on edge
searching out habitable branches,
tentative, eager.
The smell of summer lingers
through the night, tangy,
sun-dusted, sweet.
And milky coffee,
every morning the taste
of darkness, not yet diluted,
welcomes me to a pure and feral dawn.
No matter what lies behind the shadows—
what poems, what creatures, what fragile trees—
these senses quiver in readiness to claim
one unrepeatable, inexplicable
new day.
Ellen Porter
8/22/07
I Have Spoken Enough of Death
I have spoken enough of death
and now put it to sleep
until its time to rise again.
Who knows? Maybe my death approaches,
or the one whose eyes I meet
strolling the garden, blissfully
unaware of death’s lurking, perhaps
one of us will be next to lie
wooden, waxen, stilted, to be viewed
in order that this new loss be believed.
I have spoken enough of death
and now will walk,
heart and spirit relieved, I will walk
among the trees, the maple, the
pine, and the berry bushes, their
fruit long eaten by raucous birds.
I will walk close and feel the roots
settling beneath my feet, my bare feet
remembering the life spreading underground,
new shoots nudging their way sunward.
Ellen Porter
6/23/07
Niggling
All day long
from its predawn conception
till the solstice sun
balanced on the edge of Lake Erie
the poem niggled at my mind.
A hundred times
I returned to my clip board
my chair
and read the lines aloud,
scratched out a word here
added another there.
Now, perhaps a finished product,
it lies on the floor beside my chair.
The poem watches me
dares me not to pick it up
and read again.
I look away
hoping the dark will fall soon
and hoping—
hope against hope—
that it will leave me
to sleep dreamless
through the night,
collecting fodder for
the poem that may
steal away tomorrow.
Ellen Porter
8/28/07
Separation
You boarded the one fifteen train to Chicago
and in our last minutes together
we watched the stars against
the deepest darkness, night softening the
whirling of the spheres.
As I drive home
my mind imagines you,
hurling past dried up stores,
half-used railway stations,
long stretches of weedy fields, pungent,
in air too dark to see.
At home, in my bed,
I watch two become three and no sleep
to conquer twitching muscles of
worry for tomorrow’s weary day.
We may never meet again
and that slides across my heart,
rapids drifting cold stones,
and no regrets.
It was a good time here,
your visit, my hospitality.
And as I listen, quiet, sheets pulled back
against the August heat,
I hear the groaning whistle of another train,
yours racing far ahead,
and wonder how you would parse
the short span of these
long-anticipated days.
Ellen Porter
6/3/07
Symptoms
Twenty years ago
when I received
the burden of the word,
when my body was named cancerous,
I expected certain things—
pain and wasting, nausea perhaps,
most certainly an early death.
But I did not expect
to be surprised.
I was startled by
the sudden breathlessness,
the dizziness that
leads to fainting
and the awful, drenching sweat.
After all this time,
two decades,
I am grateful to barter away
the expected horrors
that never came to fruition.
The other manifestations
are no longer a surprise
but instead, a long
disruptive grace.
Ellen Porter
7/19/07
Wild Places
Until recently
I have found God only
in wild places:
while surfing Pacific waves
an eye open for dolphin or whale;
scrambling through granite bowls
the Sierra carved by glacial ice;
or walking desert arroyos
keeping watch for snake and cougar.
God is god of astounding vision,
of harmonies spawned in windy corners,
of the fragrance of white sage.
But in these last years,
confined by the inner city,
I find another kind of wild space:
drug dealers cruising,
beckoning young women,
prostitutes willing to sacrifice their souls
for the next temporary dose of heaven;
garden plots torn up, tomatoes flung
like ready-made grenades;
and occasionally wildflowers pushing up
through sidewalk cracks.
I begin to see God’s fingerprints.
Now, early in the morning
before the sun finds its path to my window
I take up fine blank paper and pen
and stare into the wild places of my soul.
God has followed me even here.
8/7/07
Brother Thomas, Potter I.
Your hands
the miraculous modelers
of clay, remain long
and thin and beautiful
while the sum of your essence,
body and soul,
splinters like dry wood,
thirsting for rain.
It is the antithesis of
clay to porcelain.
Secret glazes have
fashioned pots
inimitable
their value in museums
their sacredness in your heart
keep them the sole
gift of your flaming spirit.
Now cancer captivates your body.
Today you cannot sit at your wheel
and today you cannot lift virgin clay.
You rest in your studio
waiting as malignant cells
take your magnificent dreams
and, pressing them earthbound,
forbid their transformation to miracle from clay.
Ellen Porter
7/30/07
Fivefold Gift
These eyes, opening early
blinking moistly against new light
one eye squinted closed to
bring the images sharp and focused.
Even now, before sunrise defines
what lies in darkness
my vision waits, lurking to bring
shadow to form.
And my skin trembles with
early morning air, moving soft
and often.
My ears wait for
birdsong, a sense on edge
searching out habitable branches,
tentative, eager.
The smell of summer lingers
through the night, tangy,
sun-dusted, sweet.
And milky coffee,
every morning the taste
of darkness, not yet diluted,
welcomes me to a pure and feral dawn.
No matter what lies behind the shadows—
what poems, what creatures, what fragile trees—
these senses quiver in readiness to claim
one unrepeatable, inexplicable
new day.
Ellen Porter
8/22/07
I Have Spoken Enough of Death
I have spoken enough of death
and now put it to sleep
until its time to rise again.
Who knows? Maybe my death approaches,
or the one whose eyes I meet
strolling the garden, blissfully
unaware of death’s lurking, perhaps
one of us will be next to lie
wooden, waxen, stilted, to be viewed
in order that this new loss be believed.
I have spoken enough of death
and now will walk,
heart and spirit relieved, I will walk
among the trees, the maple, the
pine, and the berry bushes, their
fruit long eaten by raucous birds.
I will walk close and feel the roots
settling beneath my feet, my bare feet
remembering the life spreading underground,
new shoots nudging their way sunward.
Ellen Porter
6/23/07
Niggling
All day long
from its predawn conception
till the solstice sun
balanced on the edge of Lake Erie
the poem niggled at my mind.
A hundred times
I returned to my clip board
my chair
and read the lines aloud,
scratched out a word here
added another there.
Now, perhaps a finished product,
it lies on the floor beside my chair.
The poem watches me
dares me not to pick it up
and read again.
I look away
hoping the dark will fall soon
and hoping—
hope against hope—
that it will leave me
to sleep dreamless
through the night,
collecting fodder for
the poem that may
steal away tomorrow.
Ellen Porter
8/28/07
Separation
You boarded the one fifteen train to Chicago
and in our last minutes together
we watched the stars against
the deepest darkness, night softening the
whirling of the spheres.
As I drive home
my mind imagines you,
hurling past dried up stores,
half-used railway stations,
long stretches of weedy fields, pungent,
in air too dark to see.
At home, in my bed,
I watch two become three and no sleep
to conquer twitching muscles of
worry for tomorrow’s weary day.
We may never meet again
and that slides across my heart,
rapids drifting cold stones,
and no regrets.
It was a good time here,
your visit, my hospitality.
And as I listen, quiet, sheets pulled back
against the August heat,
I hear the groaning whistle of another train,
yours racing far ahead,
and wonder how you would parse
the short span of these
long-anticipated days.
Ellen Porter
6/3/07
Symptoms
Twenty years ago
when I received
the burden of the word,
when my body was named cancerous,
I expected certain things—
pain and wasting, nausea perhaps,
most certainly an early death.
But I did not expect
to be surprised.
I was startled by
the sudden breathlessness,
the dizziness that
leads to fainting
and the awful, drenching sweat.
After all this time,
two decades,
I am grateful to barter away
the expected horrors
that never came to fruition.
The other manifestations
are no longer a surprise
but instead, a long
disruptive grace.
Ellen Porter
7/19/07
Wild Places
Until recently
I have found God only
in wild places:
while surfing Pacific waves
an eye open for dolphin or whale;
scrambling through granite bowls
the Sierra carved by glacial ice;
or walking desert arroyos
keeping watch for snake and cougar.
God is god of astounding vision,
of harmonies spawned in windy corners,
of the fragrance of white sage.
But in these last years,
confined by the inner city,
I find another kind of wild space:
drug dealers cruising,
beckoning young women,
prostitutes willing to sacrifice their souls
for the next temporary dose of heaven;
garden plots torn up, tomatoes flung
like ready-made grenades;
and occasionally wildflowers pushing up
through sidewalk cracks.
I begin to see God’s fingerprints.
Now, early in the morning
before the sun finds its path to my window
I take up fine blank paper and pen
and stare into the wild places of my soul.
God has followed me even here.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
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
8/6/070
Fallow Days
Some mornings
rising early
perhaps too early for that
particular day,
I follow my routine:
swallowing pills, checking blood sugar
injecting insulin.
And then yogurt and
the first, delectable cup of coffee
creamy brown and hot.
Next reading the poets
of the moment:
Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon
enriched by their metaphors
jealous of their consistent excellence
I pick up pen and paper
and try to stir the ink
in directions of beauty.
On some of these days,
following the first sips of coffee,
it is better to return to bed
return to dream space
until the sky is bright
and the new light, ready.
Ellen Porter
7/9/07
House Plants at the Priory
Twelve years by the window
parent to forty plants
and I don’t know its name, its lineage.
The purple knobby green, forgiving, dry
leaves folded on themselves
clutching water until
I see and fill.
And then it opens wide
branches arching with an ancient pleasure
adorning the corner
coveting light.
Ivy and philodendron ignore
my watering scheme
waiting
flourishing
until I tend their souls.
A task of awe
terrible
to be responsible for life,
life so reliant as this,
these twelve fragile years.
Ellen Porter
8/23/07
My Fingers Quiver
My fingers quiver as I
balance the book of poets
on my palms, searching
out the beauty, the hidden
source of words made holy,
the pools of undifferentiated light.
Some days my malleable soul
leaps laughing into the nutritive soup
of creativity. And poems
lift from the paper, alive with an
energy distilled from
air and moon, and shadowed oaks.
But other days,
the soul lies dormant,
paralyzed by outer fiats
demanding uniformity, demure peace,
painful, grotesque similarity.
It sets my spirit quivering.
No words can form a poem
issuing from trembling hands. No?
But wait!
The trembling itself may lend the
fragile impetus, the threadbare creativity.
Quick, don’t let the fingers rest!
The trembling, the trembling.
Ellen Porter
8/17/07
Separate Grief
At first dawn,
the light promised but not yet given,
less oxygen is required
from the air of this house:
the potter died last night.
His disease, my own,
I stood wondering in my room,
wondering to what solitude I could escape
while others mourned their secret grief
around his bed.
You came into my room,
not knowing me well,
but well enough,
and offered—
no, urged—
your hospitality.
You took me silently, in strength
and the stamina of orchids drinking air,
and led me to your house next door.
You let me choose a room
and you let me linger in solitude.
A few hours later, my heart settled
back to the center of my belly,
I turned and, receiving your kiss on my cheek,
the seal of a vow,
I reached across the graveled lot and ventured home.
Ellen Porter
5/26/07
Suspended Between
I am living this new day
not dying.
Tiny things that I can do,
I do alone,
spinning energy, defying sloth.
I can write a poem at dawn,
can pull my quilt, handmade, personal,
taut and even across the abandoned bed.
I can return cloth napkins to their basket and
hide the salt and pepper behind cupboard doors.
But I cannot sweep the floor,
buy fresh vegetables at the local market,
light the candles or the stove
(oxygen sustains my necessary breath)
I cannot drive the car or
enjoy the privacy of showering alone.
I am living this new day
and dying.
Each moment etches new designs
against my soul.
Ellen Porter
9/2/07
What God Intended
Are there moments
in this earthbound journey
when we slip smoothly
between this world and the next—
moments when we become
perfectly what God intended?
I have felt those moments
at sunrise on glacial peaks;
in the ocean, the waves insouciant,
bearing me above shark and shale;
wandering, stunned beneath the
giant redwoods called sequoia.
But they do not last,
these moments of joyful mystery.
These perfect moments pulling me on
and pulling me on
until one day, I will slide
smoothly out of this world
and perfectly, permanently,
as God intended,
slip into the next one singing.
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
8/6/070
Fallow Days
Some mornings
rising early
perhaps too early for that
particular day,
I follow my routine:
swallowing pills, checking blood sugar
injecting insulin.
And then yogurt and
the first, delectable cup of coffee
creamy brown and hot.
Next reading the poets
of the moment:
Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon
enriched by their metaphors
jealous of their consistent excellence
I pick up pen and paper
and try to stir the ink
in directions of beauty.
On some of these days,
following the first sips of coffee,
it is better to return to bed
return to dream space
until the sky is bright
and the new light, ready.
Ellen Porter
7/9/07
House Plants at the Priory
Twelve years by the window
parent to forty plants
and I don’t know its name, its lineage.
The purple knobby green, forgiving, dry
leaves folded on themselves
clutching water until
I see and fill.
And then it opens wide
branches arching with an ancient pleasure
adorning the corner
coveting light.
Ivy and philodendron ignore
my watering scheme
waiting
flourishing
until I tend their souls.
A task of awe
terrible
to be responsible for life,
life so reliant as this,
these twelve fragile years.
Ellen Porter
8/23/07
My Fingers Quiver
My fingers quiver as I
balance the book of poets
on my palms, searching
out the beauty, the hidden
source of words made holy,
the pools of undifferentiated light.
Some days my malleable soul
leaps laughing into the nutritive soup
of creativity. And poems
lift from the paper, alive with an
energy distilled from
air and moon, and shadowed oaks.
But other days,
the soul lies dormant,
paralyzed by outer fiats
demanding uniformity, demure peace,
painful, grotesque similarity.
It sets my spirit quivering.
No words can form a poem
issuing from trembling hands. No?
But wait!
The trembling itself may lend the
fragile impetus, the threadbare creativity.
Quick, don’t let the fingers rest!
The trembling, the trembling.
Ellen Porter
8/17/07
Separate Grief
At first dawn,
the light promised but not yet given,
less oxygen is required
from the air of this house:
the potter died last night.
His disease, my own,
I stood wondering in my room,
wondering to what solitude I could escape
while others mourned their secret grief
around his bed.
You came into my room,
not knowing me well,
but well enough,
and offered—
no, urged—
your hospitality.
You took me silently, in strength
and the stamina of orchids drinking air,
and led me to your house next door.
You let me choose a room
and you let me linger in solitude.
A few hours later, my heart settled
back to the center of my belly,
I turned and, receiving your kiss on my cheek,
the seal of a vow,
I reached across the graveled lot and ventured home.
Ellen Porter
5/26/07
Suspended Between
I am living this new day
not dying.
Tiny things that I can do,
I do alone,
spinning energy, defying sloth.
I can write a poem at dawn,
can pull my quilt, handmade, personal,
taut and even across the abandoned bed.
I can return cloth napkins to their basket and
hide the salt and pepper behind cupboard doors.
But I cannot sweep the floor,
buy fresh vegetables at the local market,
light the candles or the stove
(oxygen sustains my necessary breath)
I cannot drive the car or
enjoy the privacy of showering alone.
I am living this new day
and dying.
Each moment etches new designs
against my soul.
Ellen Porter
9/2/07
What God Intended
Are there moments
in this earthbound journey
when we slip smoothly
between this world and the next—
moments when we become
perfectly what God intended?
I have felt those moments
at sunrise on glacial peaks;
in the ocean, the waves insouciant,
bearing me above shark and shale;
wandering, stunned beneath the
giant redwoods called sequoia.
But they do not last,
these moments of joyful mystery.
These perfect moments pulling me on
and pulling me on
until one day, I will slide
smoothly out of this world
and perfectly, permanently,
as God intended,
slip into the next one singing.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Ellen Porter
6/25/07
Anniversary and Solitude
The morning bird sings
and today a second voice
trills along toward sunrise.
Up early,
I regret yesterday’s fatigue.
But the festive meal
grilled in the garden
compensated for this morning’s restlessness.
We celebrated a delicious marriage.
They have served each other willingly
for fifty years
guaranteeing their loving, lasting bond.
He anticipates her need for salt.
She retrieves his windblown napkin.
We feast on salmon, lemon, onions, dill,
fresh, sweet strawberries.
How could I have retreated early
to the solitude of my cell?
Ellen Porter
8/8/07
Erie, Pennsylvania 2007
Since early spring
a profusion of daffodils, crocus and lilac
there has been no rain.
August now finally
finds lightning flashing
heat lightening carrying
with it drought-breaking water.
It falls at night
leaving me not completely
convinced that it came at all
save the sidewalk puddles
the small pools of ancient moisture
collected in my hammock.
The rain, the natives notice
is enough to turn the grasses green
but, they warn with a homelander’s
pessimism, not enough to fill the wells.
The men rock back, resting on porch railings,
glancing skyward.
They nod or shake their heads
wondering surely what hidden surprises,
loss or boon, September and October
and the grape harvest might bring.
Inside, the women, their histories
thick with weather, prepare the jars
for pickles, tomatoes, peach preserves.
They know, summer by summer,
that rain will fall, that
harvest, large or small will follow
the offerings of another season.
The canning jars sink into water
boiling, sterile, waiting for miracles.
Ellen Porter
8/24/07
Hospitality
Sr. Mary Margaret has seen
more than eighty years,
her face dissolved in wrinkles
running like dry riverbeds
from eyes to chin and up to her brow.
She comes to protest at the street corner
holding her sign high and waving
at cars that honk their approval:
Stop executions in Pennsylvania.
I saw her at the monastery,
passing the opening elevator door.
A blind sister emerged and Mary Margaret
casually took her hand and
they walked together, going always the same direction.
“We may end up in separate places, but the way
there is not too long—
just a brief detour.”
She goes to prison each week to weave peace with the inmates.
She reads with children, volunteers as driver.
She prays through her feet
grounded in god light, never sacrificing another to her oblations.
She prays early, ministers late.
Some call her saint,
a prayer embodied.
Others, so used to her they do not see.
But we will feel her absence as she ripens,
as we remember, honoring her life
and celebrating her passage.
It would not matter to her,
merely a distraction,
honoring and celebrating now.
Ellen Porter
5/6/07
My Father, Growing
I really hadn’t known until he was 54
and it was Christmas.
I was 18 and curious as a newborn
watching with wisdom eyes.
Dora, black as soot,
baked for the choir party.
She sang versatile soprano
like a prepubescent boy or
the full-bodied woman that she was.
She brought cheesecake, cookies and tarts,
brought them to the back door
then turned and left
sensitive to something I could not see.
Later, at the festive gathering,
I searched the candled rooms for her.
My mother, complicit,
whispered in my ear,
“Daddy won’t let Negroes in the house
except for ironing and cleaning.”
The four paid soloists were banished.
My father at 54, a racist,
and for the first time
I felt myself torn with jagged edges
from his familial frame.
Years later, he was 89,
and home was in skilled care.
he couldn’t go to church
so Mrs. Barnes, black as a horse’s hooves,
came every week to offer the host
and he received it with an exuberant “Amen!”
And in his loneliness
they talked and talked,
and he invited her to stay for supper
in the formal dining room.
Week after week they sat together
weaving a new reality.
My father was 89,
a changed man.
Ellen Porter
4/10/07
Seasons of the Moon
This illness is
malleable as the moon.
In the dark of the season
there are no symptoms
save air hunger,
breaths my lungs have
forgotten to use.
As a sliver of light
waxes tentative
through the black branches
of a solstice tree
new pain tickles
the edges of my body:
my right foot
both knees burning like dry ice.
Half full
a balanced moon
and I don’t know
which side I walk.
Am I a slacker
using diagnoses as excuse?
Or am I denying the
travesty that lurks,
destroying cells,
blooming into lung flowers?
Time pulls the moon complete:
a white and shining orb.
Disease is fully focused in the winter sky.
No balance here
just clean vision
of cells run wild.
This illness,
malleable as the moon,
grinds its
inevitable journey
through my vast, arcane
invisible soul.
Ellen Porter
6/8/07
Surprised By Pain
It comes at night
waking me
pulling me from dreams
so deep I cannot remember.
It comes, the pain,
sudden, intense
fingers plying nerve endings
across fragile bones.
In the dark
I worry--
unreasonable--
metastases, neuropathy,
and switch on the light.
Vision stares down fear.
I swallow a pill
and push my feet
the aching pain
hard against unyielding floorboards.
I wait.
Perhaps dreams will return again
spinning their covert wisdom.
Ellen Porter
7/24/07
We Grow Familiar
Best friends
and as different
as sturdy gull from crested heron.
We set apart this time
this week of holy leisure
and relax against each other
two who slither from their
work-a-day skins
left moist and shiny
to greet each other
surprised by new glistening faces
surprised by new intimate words.
And we are not disconcerted
when newness brings rough-edged regret.
We are not disconcerted when
we try to bend the other,
like training a trellis’ vine,
in our own peculiar ways.
She tells me I should wear shoes
avoiding splinters, bits of broken water-worked glass,
germs from birds who have walked this way before us.
And I, trailing fifty-nine years of
bare feet behind me
ignore her warning as
we walk the boardwalk
safely to the lake’s ruffled edge.
Or I tell her to be patient
to bide her time with me
while she, scowling, pacing
insists on taking action now—
an eager archer with bowstring taut
ready to test the opening slash
of waiting air.
We shrug and our souls
leap a bit in apprehension
as we sidle toward each other
toward hard-won, faithful familiarity.
6/25/07
Anniversary and Solitude
The morning bird sings
and today a second voice
trills along toward sunrise.
Up early,
I regret yesterday’s fatigue.
But the festive meal
grilled in the garden
compensated for this morning’s restlessness.
We celebrated a delicious marriage.
They have served each other willingly
for fifty years
guaranteeing their loving, lasting bond.
He anticipates her need for salt.
She retrieves his windblown napkin.
We feast on salmon, lemon, onions, dill,
fresh, sweet strawberries.
How could I have retreated early
to the solitude of my cell?
Ellen Porter
8/8/07
Erie, Pennsylvania 2007
Since early spring
a profusion of daffodils, crocus and lilac
there has been no rain.
August now finally
finds lightning flashing
heat lightening carrying
with it drought-breaking water.
It falls at night
leaving me not completely
convinced that it came at all
save the sidewalk puddles
the small pools of ancient moisture
collected in my hammock.
The rain, the natives notice
is enough to turn the grasses green
but, they warn with a homelander’s
pessimism, not enough to fill the wells.
The men rock back, resting on porch railings,
glancing skyward.
They nod or shake their heads
wondering surely what hidden surprises,
loss or boon, September and October
and the grape harvest might bring.
Inside, the women, their histories
thick with weather, prepare the jars
for pickles, tomatoes, peach preserves.
They know, summer by summer,
that rain will fall, that
harvest, large or small will follow
the offerings of another season.
The canning jars sink into water
boiling, sterile, waiting for miracles.
Ellen Porter
8/24/07
Hospitality
Sr. Mary Margaret has seen
more than eighty years,
her face dissolved in wrinkles
running like dry riverbeds
from eyes to chin and up to her brow.
She comes to protest at the street corner
holding her sign high and waving
at cars that honk their approval:
Stop executions in Pennsylvania.
I saw her at the monastery,
passing the opening elevator door.
A blind sister emerged and Mary Margaret
casually took her hand and
they walked together, going always the same direction.
“We may end up in separate places, but the way
there is not too long—
just a brief detour.”
She goes to prison each week to weave peace with the inmates.
She reads with children, volunteers as driver.
She prays through her feet
grounded in god light, never sacrificing another to her oblations.
She prays early, ministers late.
Some call her saint,
a prayer embodied.
Others, so used to her they do not see.
But we will feel her absence as she ripens,
as we remember, honoring her life
and celebrating her passage.
It would not matter to her,
merely a distraction,
honoring and celebrating now.
Ellen Porter
5/6/07
My Father, Growing
I really hadn’t known until he was 54
and it was Christmas.
I was 18 and curious as a newborn
watching with wisdom eyes.
Dora, black as soot,
baked for the choir party.
She sang versatile soprano
like a prepubescent boy or
the full-bodied woman that she was.
She brought cheesecake, cookies and tarts,
brought them to the back door
then turned and left
sensitive to something I could not see.
Later, at the festive gathering,
I searched the candled rooms for her.
My mother, complicit,
whispered in my ear,
“Daddy won’t let Negroes in the house
except for ironing and cleaning.”
The four paid soloists were banished.
My father at 54, a racist,
and for the first time
I felt myself torn with jagged edges
from his familial frame.
Years later, he was 89,
and home was in skilled care.
he couldn’t go to church
so Mrs. Barnes, black as a horse’s hooves,
came every week to offer the host
and he received it with an exuberant “Amen!”
And in his loneliness
they talked and talked,
and he invited her to stay for supper
in the formal dining room.
Week after week they sat together
weaving a new reality.
My father was 89,
a changed man.
Ellen Porter
4/10/07
Seasons of the Moon
This illness is
malleable as the moon.
In the dark of the season
there are no symptoms
save air hunger,
breaths my lungs have
forgotten to use.
As a sliver of light
waxes tentative
through the black branches
of a solstice tree
new pain tickles
the edges of my body:
my right foot
both knees burning like dry ice.
Half full
a balanced moon
and I don’t know
which side I walk.
Am I a slacker
using diagnoses as excuse?
Or am I denying the
travesty that lurks,
destroying cells,
blooming into lung flowers?
Time pulls the moon complete:
a white and shining orb.
Disease is fully focused in the winter sky.
No balance here
just clean vision
of cells run wild.
This illness,
malleable as the moon,
grinds its
inevitable journey
through my vast, arcane
invisible soul.
Ellen Porter
6/8/07
Surprised By Pain
It comes at night
waking me
pulling me from dreams
so deep I cannot remember.
It comes, the pain,
sudden, intense
fingers plying nerve endings
across fragile bones.
In the dark
I worry--
unreasonable--
metastases, neuropathy,
and switch on the light.
Vision stares down fear.
I swallow a pill
and push my feet
the aching pain
hard against unyielding floorboards.
I wait.
Perhaps dreams will return again
spinning their covert wisdom.
Ellen Porter
7/24/07
We Grow Familiar
Best friends
and as different
as sturdy gull from crested heron.
We set apart this time
this week of holy leisure
and relax against each other
two who slither from their
work-a-day skins
left moist and shiny
to greet each other
surprised by new glistening faces
surprised by new intimate words.
And we are not disconcerted
when newness brings rough-edged regret.
We are not disconcerted when
we try to bend the other,
like training a trellis’ vine,
in our own peculiar ways.
She tells me I should wear shoes
avoiding splinters, bits of broken water-worked glass,
germs from birds who have walked this way before us.
And I, trailing fifty-nine years of
bare feet behind me
ignore her warning as
we walk the boardwalk
safely to the lake’s ruffled edge.
Or I tell her to be patient
to bide her time with me
while she, scowling, pacing
insists on taking action now—
an eager archer with bowstring taut
ready to test the opening slash
of waiting air.
We shrug and our souls
leap a bit in apprehension
as we sidle toward each other
toward hard-won, faithful familiarity.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Ellen Porter
8/9/07
Ancestors
I went to see her, my Granny, every week
once I could drive and my mother allowed the car.
Before that, I would ride with my grandmother
in the back seat, my father driving from
one ancestral home to another,
and lay my head in her lap as she stroked
my hair with ginger love.
But now, nearly grown at eighteen,
I could go at my leisure, though I missed
the childtime moments in her lap.
Granny, tell me about Will.
I’d asked her a myriad of times before and she’d told.
She was eighteen, too, and a teacher,
restless and eager to know the world.
Will wooed her and she loved him.
They strolled the leaf-laden paths
of the town center and
leaned against the cold and blackwashed lamp poles,
looking at each other in amazed surprise.
And how they laughed!
They laughed and their great imaginations
built a life together.
And they were only eighteen.
But her restlessness and eagerness to see
tore her reluctant and resigned
from his generous arms.
She would be back, she promised him,
in a year.
She stowed her life’s necessities in
a steamer trunk and set off alone for Puerto Rico.
She left Will standing, lonely already, at the pier.
She didn’t tell much about the year there, teaching,
drinking in lights from southern trees.
And when the year was over,
she came, eager as before, back to California,
but Will was gone,
no one standing at the pier.
Then, heart-hardened,
older than her nineteen years,
she was found and married by my grandfather,
an itinerant, stern, unsavory priest.
No laughter was shared between them.
They gave life to two obligatory daughters
and one of them spawned me.
Granny’d search my face and
tell me the sorrow was wound
tight around her heart
for the rest of her ages, but
that I had come and
the painful vines had loosened some,
having me love her,
constant and singular.
And she’d look away, past my head,
and I’d see Will, reflected from
behind her eyes.
I knew her restlessness had betrayed her.
Ellen Porter
8/20/07
Prose Poem
Elementary Ecology
We drove the Mojave Desert north toward Bishop, toward camping, the Sierra Nevada Mountains rising impossible, to 14,000 feet on our left. The eastern side, like a cliff or a knife blade, magnificent, paring California, east to west, in half. Mary drove, her daughter and a friend, teenaged, played, giggling, slurping cokes in the back seat. I rode shotgun. The daughter’s friend finished her drink, rolled down her window and tossed the cup. Mary pulled to the road edge and commanded, “Go back and get it. This is not a dump.” The friend, I do not remember her face or her name, sat perverse, arms folded across her chest, insubordinate. Mary shut off the motor, unperturbed and there we sat, a struggle of wills. Finally, Mary’s daughter, looking disgusted with her friend, not her mother, said, “Just go get it. Otherwise we’ll sit here all day and fry.” The friend, in defeated, disgusted, disdain, opened the door and began her trek backwards, embarrassed into ecology.
Ellen Porter
8/5/07
Hospitality
This morning
as every morning
I rise early
mid summer
just before dawn.
It is sacred time
a quiet pause spent with poets
whose verses both awe and intimidate.
There is a guest in our house today
one who rises early and
seeks companionship.
She comes to my room,
seeing promising light,
and not knocking
walks in
expecting a hug and conversation.
I rise for the thick embrace
warmer than our acquaintanceship requires.
She asks what book
absorbs my attention
and I show her the collection of Mary Oliver.
I tell her this is my time for reading,
hosting the poets,
and then for writing of my own.
I do not offer her a chair
and embarrassed,
she backs, obedient, out of the room.
Wrestling with guilt,
I wonder which is more important:
the requisite hospitality shown to a houseguest
or the eager, vibrant welcoming
of the ghosts of absent poets?
Ellen Porter
5/25/07
Morning Song (after Mary Oliver)
I rise late this morning
and go to my chair,
dawn unfolding like a lazy flower.
The daily bird is halfway
through her song,
calling, calling other birds,
the stray raccoon, the city cats, the rhymer.
I breathe deeply,
hoping to catch the bit
of dawn I missed.
Somewhere in the
intermittent light
the elusive poet
lingers.
Ellen Porter
6/16/07
Scarring
Once in my lifetime
there was a struggle
deep as death
yet survived unwittingly
with scarring.
It was not
a willing survival
but one that brought
terrifying change
startling change
scarring as the marks of a warrior.
And when it was over
when I panted my spent rage
hands on my knees, gasping air
I wondered if I would ever live again.
And panting, and circling the memory of terror
I breathed again and again.
Years later
accustomed to my ritual scars
I greet another struggle.
But this time the battle has already been fought
once for all.
I sit quietly in the midst of terror
pulling layers of fear back
like artichoke leaves
looking, fingering down
searching for what is left
in the heart
essential, transformed.
Ellen Porter
6/28/07
Sunday Afternoon
Across the parking lot
and through the gate
not latched
but crowded with wildflowers
I head toward the hammock.
Pillow, cap and bottled water
book and glasses in a bag,
it is not too heavy a burden
when I keep in mind swaying
in the dappled sun.
I went my way around the tree
planted some years past
to kindle memories of a Christmas
all but forgotten.
Squeezing tight between the tree and wall
my feet are careful not to crush
the few remaining columbine.
And then I turn the corner and
enter the sunken, hidden garden.
Around the roses, newly tended,
rid of their bed of violets,
I lightly touch an unknown bush
taller, wider, greener than I.
It startles alive
erupting small birds
winging and singing out of its branches
onto the old brick wall
wisteria laden.
I wait still, watching,
marveling at the migration
and then fall, awkward
onto the waiting bed
suspended in air.
I am home.
Ellen Porter
7/12/07
We are in a Drought
We are in a drought they say.
Every state in the nation except
Oklahoma and Texas
which are flooding.
It is difficult to worry
when each golden blue, Pennsylvania day
offers its less than timid
warmth, soothing
my shoulders
down my skeletal frame
to my toes.
But today, I went to lie in the hammock,
envisioning an hour of warm and breezy rest.
The sky was cloudy
the sidewalk damp
from sixteen drops of rain
and the hammock had
gathered a small, oh very
small, puddle of water.
Unconvinced, unintimidated, I lay
on the damp, and
studying the new straight
hollyhocks, their smiling, cartoon-like
faces welcoming
the sun and rain alike,
I turned my face to receive
the next twenty-six drops
enough to send me,
the butt of a joke,
giggling
moistly home.
8/9/07
Ancestors
I went to see her, my Granny, every week
once I could drive and my mother allowed the car.
Before that, I would ride with my grandmother
in the back seat, my father driving from
one ancestral home to another,
and lay my head in her lap as she stroked
my hair with ginger love.
But now, nearly grown at eighteen,
I could go at my leisure, though I missed
the childtime moments in her lap.
Granny, tell me about Will.
I’d asked her a myriad of times before and she’d told.
She was eighteen, too, and a teacher,
restless and eager to know the world.
Will wooed her and she loved him.
They strolled the leaf-laden paths
of the town center and
leaned against the cold and blackwashed lamp poles,
looking at each other in amazed surprise.
And how they laughed!
They laughed and their great imaginations
built a life together.
And they were only eighteen.
But her restlessness and eagerness to see
tore her reluctant and resigned
from his generous arms.
She would be back, she promised him,
in a year.
She stowed her life’s necessities in
a steamer trunk and set off alone for Puerto Rico.
She left Will standing, lonely already, at the pier.
She didn’t tell much about the year there, teaching,
drinking in lights from southern trees.
And when the year was over,
she came, eager as before, back to California,
but Will was gone,
no one standing at the pier.
Then, heart-hardened,
older than her nineteen years,
she was found and married by my grandfather,
an itinerant, stern, unsavory priest.
No laughter was shared between them.
They gave life to two obligatory daughters
and one of them spawned me.
Granny’d search my face and
tell me the sorrow was wound
tight around her heart
for the rest of her ages, but
that I had come and
the painful vines had loosened some,
having me love her,
constant and singular.
And she’d look away, past my head,
and I’d see Will, reflected from
behind her eyes.
I knew her restlessness had betrayed her.
Ellen Porter
8/20/07
Prose Poem
Elementary Ecology
We drove the Mojave Desert north toward Bishop, toward camping, the Sierra Nevada Mountains rising impossible, to 14,000 feet on our left. The eastern side, like a cliff or a knife blade, magnificent, paring California, east to west, in half. Mary drove, her daughter and a friend, teenaged, played, giggling, slurping cokes in the back seat. I rode shotgun. The daughter’s friend finished her drink, rolled down her window and tossed the cup. Mary pulled to the road edge and commanded, “Go back and get it. This is not a dump.” The friend, I do not remember her face or her name, sat perverse, arms folded across her chest, insubordinate. Mary shut off the motor, unperturbed and there we sat, a struggle of wills. Finally, Mary’s daughter, looking disgusted with her friend, not her mother, said, “Just go get it. Otherwise we’ll sit here all day and fry.” The friend, in defeated, disgusted, disdain, opened the door and began her trek backwards, embarrassed into ecology.
Ellen Porter
8/5/07
Hospitality
This morning
as every morning
I rise early
mid summer
just before dawn.
It is sacred time
a quiet pause spent with poets
whose verses both awe and intimidate.
There is a guest in our house today
one who rises early and
seeks companionship.
She comes to my room,
seeing promising light,
and not knocking
walks in
expecting a hug and conversation.
I rise for the thick embrace
warmer than our acquaintanceship requires.
She asks what book
absorbs my attention
and I show her the collection of Mary Oliver.
I tell her this is my time for reading,
hosting the poets,
and then for writing of my own.
I do not offer her a chair
and embarrassed,
she backs, obedient, out of the room.
Wrestling with guilt,
I wonder which is more important:
the requisite hospitality shown to a houseguest
or the eager, vibrant welcoming
of the ghosts of absent poets?
Ellen Porter
5/25/07
Morning Song (after Mary Oliver)
I rise late this morning
and go to my chair,
dawn unfolding like a lazy flower.
The daily bird is halfway
through her song,
calling, calling other birds,
the stray raccoon, the city cats, the rhymer.
I breathe deeply,
hoping to catch the bit
of dawn I missed.
Somewhere in the
intermittent light
the elusive poet
lingers.
Ellen Porter
6/16/07
Scarring
Once in my lifetime
there was a struggle
deep as death
yet survived unwittingly
with scarring.
It was not
a willing survival
but one that brought
terrifying change
startling change
scarring as the marks of a warrior.
And when it was over
when I panted my spent rage
hands on my knees, gasping air
I wondered if I would ever live again.
And panting, and circling the memory of terror
I breathed again and again.
Years later
accustomed to my ritual scars
I greet another struggle.
But this time the battle has already been fought
once for all.
I sit quietly in the midst of terror
pulling layers of fear back
like artichoke leaves
looking, fingering down
searching for what is left
in the heart
essential, transformed.
Ellen Porter
6/28/07
Sunday Afternoon
Across the parking lot
and through the gate
not latched
but crowded with wildflowers
I head toward the hammock.
Pillow, cap and bottled water
book and glasses in a bag,
it is not too heavy a burden
when I keep in mind swaying
in the dappled sun.
I went my way around the tree
planted some years past
to kindle memories of a Christmas
all but forgotten.
Squeezing tight between the tree and wall
my feet are careful not to crush
the few remaining columbine.
And then I turn the corner and
enter the sunken, hidden garden.
Around the roses, newly tended,
rid of their bed of violets,
I lightly touch an unknown bush
taller, wider, greener than I.
It startles alive
erupting small birds
winging and singing out of its branches
onto the old brick wall
wisteria laden.
I wait still, watching,
marveling at the migration
and then fall, awkward
onto the waiting bed
suspended in air.
I am home.
Ellen Porter
7/12/07
We are in a Drought
We are in a drought they say.
Every state in the nation except
Oklahoma and Texas
which are flooding.
It is difficult to worry
when each golden blue, Pennsylvania day
offers its less than timid
warmth, soothing
my shoulders
down my skeletal frame
to my toes.
But today, I went to lie in the hammock,
envisioning an hour of warm and breezy rest.
The sky was cloudy
the sidewalk damp
from sixteen drops of rain
and the hammock had
gathered a small, oh very
small, puddle of water.
Unconvinced, unintimidated, I lay
on the damp, and
studying the new straight
hollyhocks, their smiling, cartoon-like
faces welcoming
the sun and rain alike,
I turned my face to receive
the next twenty-six drops
enough to send me,
the butt of a joke,
giggling
moistly home.
Monday, January 7, 2008
Ellen Porter
6/20/07
After the Scan
After the scan
I go to the clinic
with two essential friends.
I don’t have to wait.
The doctor comes in.
He is East Indian
young and beautiful.
Absorbs my trust.
He tries to hide
an embarrassed smile.
I have seen your scan, he tells me,
And I don’t understand.
What have you been doing
for the cancer?
Herbs? Potions?
What other magic?
I shake my head
puzzled, waiting.
He continues.
It looks better.
The tumor is smaller
the lung is clearer.
We are doing no treatment
and still you are getting better.
I don’t understand.
I ponder
wonder what in my life
would account for this miracle.
I get up early and write poems.
Listen to the morning bird sing.
I walk a mile a day with my closest friend.
I sing communal prayer
and bask at the center of a drumming circle.
I receive a weekly massage,
And I am loved by many.
I love them in return.
I read in my hammock in a secret garden.
Talk with my therapist.
Work two hours a day.
I eat what I want.
I am caught off balance with this quixotic news.
My soul quivers.
And then he adds
you also have a kidney stone.
I laugh and laugh.
Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Easter Trilogy
Walking in the snow
I wait for Easter morning
An ebony sky
No meat on Fridays
Lenten fast twice forgotten
Resurrection looms
Lenten days ended
My old lungs attempt a breath
I will not fast from air again
Ellen Porter
8/19/07
Homily For a Dead Brother
Earmarked for Pennsylvania
the jumbo jet poised for take-off
looks a hurricane in the eye.
You wait, dazed,
wandering the airport,
seeing your reflection in the eyes of strangers.
Looking like any other passenger,
you hold close to your side
the homily for a dead brother.
He died with you away,
harder for you than for him.
For him, serendipitous.
He needed to die alone
no strings tying him down to this world
the sheets left loose, encouraging escape.
You have missed it all,
yet you stand, ready,
praying for a hurricane diverted
to join the grieving ones,
stunned in silence
at his final departure.
Ellen Porter
5/30/07
Montana de Oro
We were three
walking at midday
across a field of wildflowers:
Indian paintbrush, lupine, California poppies.
The mountain at our backs turned red and gold.
Elizabeth was older than I—
old enough to be my mother—
and with us, between us
as we ran and jumped
wild with spring,
her daughter, Ruth, a child of twelve.
Across the field and down the cliff
the Pacific.
We watched for dolphin backs to break the surface,
for the spout of whales,
but what we saw was
a clear, clean shimmering blue
unbroken stillness except
for the lazy surf nibbling
at water’s edge.
A perfect day with
the song and vision of
red-winged blackbirds.
I jumped a gully
and landed on barbed wire.
A puncture on my leg.
Looking around with close intent,
I saw cow patties, flat and dry manure,
and my heart thought tetanus.
Liz took my foot in her lap
And squeezed the wound to
Make blood run.
The girl grew impatient
with my fear.
We left the day’s perfection
to seek inoculation.
Our love for each other
and the images of flower
and whales chased us to the car.
A small distraction—
life threatening but inconsequential—
in our sun drenched
salted air, magical
naiveté.
Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Same Wild Wings
The beginning of a week
free of chores and promises.
The beginning of a week
and I can sleep long
the sun not yet rising up
through the maple and oaks
up over the deep rippled blue
of Lake Erie.
I can sleep long
and in my eagerness
to give into lethargy
I come fully awake.
So I wander the unfamiliar cabin
in the dark
pulled like a lake tide
toward coffee and milk.
I wander in the dark
and listen to the morning bird
singing a familiar song.
Could this be a creature
common to these unfamiliar woods,
or did my morning bird,
same song, same wild wings,
follow me here from home?
It is the beginning of a week
and I can spend all day long
wondering.
Ellen Porter
8/12/07
Sunday
This morning
rising early is not enough.
It is not enough for generous time
to browse the poets,
to take pen and lined school paper
and set words to breath and pulse.
We must ready ourselves for church
shower away the first layer of loam
setting salvation rasping against
clean soil.
I could say I’d prefer the soil,
mixing tree dust and creek moss
returning me, a pure, natural
wonderfully tainted spirit
ready to fall to my knees
in an elaborate, complex,
moldering pile of ancient leaves.
Ellen Porter
6/9/07
Walking
Before debilitation
when I still drew oxygen
from city air,
we walked.
Two miles
threading the inner city
waving to the homeless.
We walked past the cathedral
its sacred perimeter
guarded with
a black iron fence.
Roses climbed that iron
and revealed the seasons:
bare, brown skeleton
iced with snow;
tiny leaves beginning slowly
bringing hints of orange then green;
and the sudden burst
from bud to blossom
a perfusion of roses
turning iron vivid pink;
finally a slow dying away
autumn with winter looming behind.
We walked the sidewalks
became familiar with pot holes
and cracks.
We watched green lights turn red
and dared the empty intersections.
Two miles, forty minutes,
we walked.
But now my breath is shattered
and oxygen comes from a tank.
And still, together,
we walk.
My tether limits our wanderings
and so we walk the hall—
twenty-six laps in each direction—
one mile.
Instead of the homeless
there are day care children
playing outside the window:
two sitting toe to toe
learning toddler talk.
And instead of roses
an asparagus fern
waves its tendrils around our heads.
We walk
no potholes
no intersections, no seasons.
She sets the pace,
touching the wall with magic
at each lap, calling out
“starting 17”
and in our heads we count
how many more to go.
Warding off death
one mile at a time
we walk.
6/20/07
After the Scan
After the scan
I go to the clinic
with two essential friends.
I don’t have to wait.
The doctor comes in.
He is East Indian
young and beautiful.
Absorbs my trust.
He tries to hide
an embarrassed smile.
I have seen your scan, he tells me,
And I don’t understand.
What have you been doing
for the cancer?
Herbs? Potions?
What other magic?
I shake my head
puzzled, waiting.
He continues.
It looks better.
The tumor is smaller
the lung is clearer.
We are doing no treatment
and still you are getting better.
I don’t understand.
I ponder
wonder what in my life
would account for this miracle.
I get up early and write poems.
Listen to the morning bird sing.
I walk a mile a day with my closest friend.
I sing communal prayer
and bask at the center of a drumming circle.
I receive a weekly massage,
And I am loved by many.
I love them in return.
I read in my hammock in a secret garden.
Talk with my therapist.
Work two hours a day.
I eat what I want.
I am caught off balance with this quixotic news.
My soul quivers.
And then he adds
you also have a kidney stone.
I laugh and laugh.
Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Easter Trilogy
Walking in the snow
I wait for Easter morning
An ebony sky
No meat on Fridays
Lenten fast twice forgotten
Resurrection looms
Lenten days ended
My old lungs attempt a breath
I will not fast from air again
Ellen Porter
8/19/07
Homily For a Dead Brother
Earmarked for Pennsylvania
the jumbo jet poised for take-off
looks a hurricane in the eye.
You wait, dazed,
wandering the airport,
seeing your reflection in the eyes of strangers.
Looking like any other passenger,
you hold close to your side
the homily for a dead brother.
He died with you away,
harder for you than for him.
For him, serendipitous.
He needed to die alone
no strings tying him down to this world
the sheets left loose, encouraging escape.
You have missed it all,
yet you stand, ready,
praying for a hurricane diverted
to join the grieving ones,
stunned in silence
at his final departure.
Ellen Porter
5/30/07
Montana de Oro
We were three
walking at midday
across a field of wildflowers:
Indian paintbrush, lupine, California poppies.
The mountain at our backs turned red and gold.
Elizabeth was older than I—
old enough to be my mother—
and with us, between us
as we ran and jumped
wild with spring,
her daughter, Ruth, a child of twelve.
Across the field and down the cliff
the Pacific.
We watched for dolphin backs to break the surface,
for the spout of whales,
but what we saw was
a clear, clean shimmering blue
unbroken stillness except
for the lazy surf nibbling
at water’s edge.
A perfect day with
the song and vision of
red-winged blackbirds.
I jumped a gully
and landed on barbed wire.
A puncture on my leg.
Looking around with close intent,
I saw cow patties, flat and dry manure,
and my heart thought tetanus.
Liz took my foot in her lap
And squeezed the wound to
Make blood run.
The girl grew impatient
with my fear.
We left the day’s perfection
to seek inoculation.
Our love for each other
and the images of flower
and whales chased us to the car.
A small distraction—
life threatening but inconsequential—
in our sun drenched
salted air, magical
naiveté.
Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Same Wild Wings
The beginning of a week
free of chores and promises.
The beginning of a week
and I can sleep long
the sun not yet rising up
through the maple and oaks
up over the deep rippled blue
of Lake Erie.
I can sleep long
and in my eagerness
to give into lethargy
I come fully awake.
So I wander the unfamiliar cabin
in the dark
pulled like a lake tide
toward coffee and milk.
I wander in the dark
and listen to the morning bird
singing a familiar song.
Could this be a creature
common to these unfamiliar woods,
or did my morning bird,
same song, same wild wings,
follow me here from home?
It is the beginning of a week
and I can spend all day long
wondering.
Ellen Porter
8/12/07
Sunday
This morning
rising early is not enough.
It is not enough for generous time
to browse the poets,
to take pen and lined school paper
and set words to breath and pulse.
We must ready ourselves for church
shower away the first layer of loam
setting salvation rasping against
clean soil.
I could say I’d prefer the soil,
mixing tree dust and creek moss
returning me, a pure, natural
wonderfully tainted spirit
ready to fall to my knees
in an elaborate, complex,
moldering pile of ancient leaves.
Ellen Porter
6/9/07
Walking
Before debilitation
when I still drew oxygen
from city air,
we walked.
Two miles
threading the inner city
waving to the homeless.
We walked past the cathedral
its sacred perimeter
guarded with
a black iron fence.
Roses climbed that iron
and revealed the seasons:
bare, brown skeleton
iced with snow;
tiny leaves beginning slowly
bringing hints of orange then green;
and the sudden burst
from bud to blossom
a perfusion of roses
turning iron vivid pink;
finally a slow dying away
autumn with winter looming behind.
We walked the sidewalks
became familiar with pot holes
and cracks.
We watched green lights turn red
and dared the empty intersections.
Two miles, forty minutes,
we walked.
But now my breath is shattered
and oxygen comes from a tank.
And still, together,
we walk.
My tether limits our wanderings
and so we walk the hall—
twenty-six laps in each direction—
one mile.
Instead of the homeless
there are day care children
playing outside the window:
two sitting toe to toe
learning toddler talk.
And instead of roses
an asparagus fern
waves its tendrils around our heads.
We walk
no potholes
no intersections, no seasons.
She sets the pace,
touching the wall with magic
at each lap, calling out
“starting 17”
and in our heads we count
how many more to go.
Warding off death
one mile at a time
we walk.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Ellen Porter
8/3/07
A Terrible Solitude
I stepped on the tarmac
and up the stairs.
I, alone, straddling the known world
and the beckoning wildness of Alaska.
Alone, so much beauty to bear alone.
I remember surprises
rising, impossible,
from haloed morning fog.
The knife-sharp division between
clean, clear water of the bay
and the clouded, saucer blue glacial milk;
a myriad humpback whales
waiving their oar-like wings, spouting
their life’s breath,
breaching and breaking the bay’s mirror calm;
and the eagles—
oh hundreds of them—
dry and stretching on black, igneous cliffs;
and finally rocking gently at night on my bunk
kindled by the tide.
Numberless moments
of huge and wonderful awe.
And all of it borne alone.
No one to tremble with in beauty
to gasp with in surprise.
I have never risked that terrible solitude again:
days, set aside,
out of time
unshared, unrepeatable.
I do not remember going home.
Ellen Porter
7/18/07
Death of a Benedictine Monastic
All day long my breath,
stolen by tumor,
comes in panicky, rapid patterns,
each time surprising me and
each time trying to erase from
my body’s ancient memory
the sequence of breathing.
There is no regimen to ease the panic
but soon, in less than
an interminable moment
it resolves and I continue as before
on an easy, satisfying menu of air.
Then, relaxed, I notice
the rain-ready fragrance of evening.
So I choose against
going to the funeral mass
where the community gathers
to send a sister forth to the next
faith battened, mysterious, unknown segment
of her journey.
In her last week
she, too, fought for breath,
pneumonia stealing air space
replacing steady regularity
with her own chaotic gasp.
I choose not to attend her mass
through selfish denial of comparison,
or more likely because I am compelled to stay
at the window
listening to my spirit sing
as I witness the first
drought-breaking seeds of rain.
Ellen Porter
6/11/07
Haiku Trilogy
I. Today before dawn
the morning bird is silent
my eyes won’t open.
It is too early
no reason for wakefulness
except my coffee.
Maybe just today
I will give in to excess
and return to bed.
Even the bird is sleeping.
II. I rise late today
remembering yesterday
and the ghost of dreams.
Why get up at all
another day of struggle
keeping death away?
I do not hear dawn’s bird
how can I struggle with air
if it doesn’t sing?
Breath in exchange for birdsong.
III. I rise out of sleep
my soul in competition
God awake for hours.
We gather slowly
there is no bird song today
bells peal their message.
We fall on our knees
chanting together in praise
God laughs in delight.
Our poor attempt at homage.
Ellen Porter
3/30/07
Memory
I squat down on
the edge of something perilous.
Bits of memory drift by
like floaters in failing vision.
I bend and sway to
avoid these dark fragments,
but one by two by three
they settle on the edge
and we peer at each other.
I am in pain enough,
I whisper,
making new memories
malevolent and sleek.
Go away,
I hiss.
Continue your dark journey.
Leave me alone on the edge
of this new and terrible void.
Ellen Porter
7/11/07
Rushing Out the Door
I will never complain of
summer, of heat and humidity
of dry, brownish golden brittle
grass where green should flourish.
I will never complain as long as
I can romp free of winter coats
and snow laced boots, rushing
out the door, not considering, in
shorts and barefoot with sleeveless tees.
It is God’s time to decide
when the sun closes in on darkness
early and then champions the sky,
each ray describing a different
cobalt, cornflower, cerulean blue.
It is not my decision when rain will
fall, teasing green from
the waiting bristles.
And I am content, waiting
for my skin to inhale moisture
from the air. Waiting for
flakes around my knees to soften,
elbows to lose their creases, and
bare feet their painful furrows.
I am content waiting, waiting
this long, shimmering, mid-summer’s day.
Ellen Porter
8/28/07
St. Benedict
The monastery grounds
secrete the seeds of future bounty,
with no one now to separate
weed from weed and
flower from flower.
The sister whose passion and gift
has gardened these rain blessed premises for years,
has guarded the sacred rose
urged peony and iris,
is sent away to earn a salary
to help support the monastery grounds
that grow ragged in her absence.
She has a small plot
behind her house where her
gift and passion are shrunk, lilliputian.
And the vegetable garden,
years of tomatoes, green beans,
squash grown in six inches of
mulched soil resting on clay,
the vegetable garden has been
rototilled and destroyed,
left victim to invading grass
to beautify, to simplify the monastery grounds.
To break the heart of the gardener.
Indoors, beyond the reach
of black-eyed Susan, squirrels and deer
we pray in chapel to learn the love
of God’s ecology:
not nature subject to man,
but a relationship of equality,
women, men, and nurturing soil.
A new hypocrisy in the monastery close,
St. Benedict’s face mottled with tears of
sorrow and embarrassment.
Ellen Porter
7/25/07
Up the Hillside
When I was eight and ten and twelve
and the dry hillside touched the house
with early morning, dew-moistened sage
and offered a fragrance that would
haunt me years later at fifty five and fifty nine,
when I was still young and more resilient
than was wise
I cradled the cat of the moment and
loved it with a temporary heart.
This one was snow-hare white
and spread eight toes on each front paw.
It massaged my leg with those expanded toes
and purred
not sensing its inevitable, untimely death.
The next day or perhaps a week later
I found its snowy fur up the hillside
wrapped in blood,
All the pieces of a cat save the fur
gone for coyote supper.
The cats came in succession to control the mice,
never allowed the shelter of a safe house,
my mother allergic,
my father, a farm boy all his life,
believing animals belonged outside.
And my novice heart, offering
what limited love it could muster,
broken for these brief, unsuspecting lives.
8/3/07
A Terrible Solitude
I stepped on the tarmac
and up the stairs.
I, alone, straddling the known world
and the beckoning wildness of Alaska.
Alone, so much beauty to bear alone.
I remember surprises
rising, impossible,
from haloed morning fog.
The knife-sharp division between
clean, clear water of the bay
and the clouded, saucer blue glacial milk;
a myriad humpback whales
waiving their oar-like wings, spouting
their life’s breath,
breaching and breaking the bay’s mirror calm;
and the eagles—
oh hundreds of them—
dry and stretching on black, igneous cliffs;
and finally rocking gently at night on my bunk
kindled by the tide.
Numberless moments
of huge and wonderful awe.
And all of it borne alone.
No one to tremble with in beauty
to gasp with in surprise.
I have never risked that terrible solitude again:
days, set aside,
out of time
unshared, unrepeatable.
I do not remember going home.
Ellen Porter
7/18/07
Death of a Benedictine Monastic
All day long my breath,
stolen by tumor,
comes in panicky, rapid patterns,
each time surprising me and
each time trying to erase from
my body’s ancient memory
the sequence of breathing.
There is no regimen to ease the panic
but soon, in less than
an interminable moment
it resolves and I continue as before
on an easy, satisfying menu of air.
Then, relaxed, I notice
the rain-ready fragrance of evening.
So I choose against
going to the funeral mass
where the community gathers
to send a sister forth to the next
faith battened, mysterious, unknown segment
of her journey.
In her last week
she, too, fought for breath,
pneumonia stealing air space
replacing steady regularity
with her own chaotic gasp.
I choose not to attend her mass
through selfish denial of comparison,
or more likely because I am compelled to stay
at the window
listening to my spirit sing
as I witness the first
drought-breaking seeds of rain.
Ellen Porter
6/11/07
Haiku Trilogy
I. Today before dawn
the morning bird is silent
my eyes won’t open.
It is too early
no reason for wakefulness
except my coffee.
Maybe just today
I will give in to excess
and return to bed.
Even the bird is sleeping.
II. I rise late today
remembering yesterday
and the ghost of dreams.
Why get up at all
another day of struggle
keeping death away?
I do not hear dawn’s bird
how can I struggle with air
if it doesn’t sing?
Breath in exchange for birdsong.
III. I rise out of sleep
my soul in competition
God awake for hours.
We gather slowly
there is no bird song today
bells peal their message.
We fall on our knees
chanting together in praise
God laughs in delight.
Our poor attempt at homage.
Ellen Porter
3/30/07
Memory
I squat down on
the edge of something perilous.
Bits of memory drift by
like floaters in failing vision.
I bend and sway to
avoid these dark fragments,
but one by two by three
they settle on the edge
and we peer at each other.
I am in pain enough,
I whisper,
making new memories
malevolent and sleek.
Go away,
I hiss.
Continue your dark journey.
Leave me alone on the edge
of this new and terrible void.
Ellen Porter
7/11/07
Rushing Out the Door
I will never complain of
summer, of heat and humidity
of dry, brownish golden brittle
grass where green should flourish.
I will never complain as long as
I can romp free of winter coats
and snow laced boots, rushing
out the door, not considering, in
shorts and barefoot with sleeveless tees.
It is God’s time to decide
when the sun closes in on darkness
early and then champions the sky,
each ray describing a different
cobalt, cornflower, cerulean blue.
It is not my decision when rain will
fall, teasing green from
the waiting bristles.
And I am content, waiting
for my skin to inhale moisture
from the air. Waiting for
flakes around my knees to soften,
elbows to lose their creases, and
bare feet their painful furrows.
I am content waiting, waiting
this long, shimmering, mid-summer’s day.
Ellen Porter
8/28/07
St. Benedict
The monastery grounds
secrete the seeds of future bounty,
with no one now to separate
weed from weed and
flower from flower.
The sister whose passion and gift
has gardened these rain blessed premises for years,
has guarded the sacred rose
urged peony and iris,
is sent away to earn a salary
to help support the monastery grounds
that grow ragged in her absence.
She has a small plot
behind her house where her
gift and passion are shrunk, lilliputian.
And the vegetable garden,
years of tomatoes, green beans,
squash grown in six inches of
mulched soil resting on clay,
the vegetable garden has been
rototilled and destroyed,
left victim to invading grass
to beautify, to simplify the monastery grounds.
To break the heart of the gardener.
Indoors, beyond the reach
of black-eyed Susan, squirrels and deer
we pray in chapel to learn the love
of God’s ecology:
not nature subject to man,
but a relationship of equality,
women, men, and nurturing soil.
A new hypocrisy in the monastery close,
St. Benedict’s face mottled with tears of
sorrow and embarrassment.
Ellen Porter
7/25/07
Up the Hillside
When I was eight and ten and twelve
and the dry hillside touched the house
with early morning, dew-moistened sage
and offered a fragrance that would
haunt me years later at fifty five and fifty nine,
when I was still young and more resilient
than was wise
I cradled the cat of the moment and
loved it with a temporary heart.
This one was snow-hare white
and spread eight toes on each front paw.
It massaged my leg with those expanded toes
and purred
not sensing its inevitable, untimely death.
The next day or perhaps a week later
I found its snowy fur up the hillside
wrapped in blood,
All the pieces of a cat save the fur
gone for coyote supper.
The cats came in succession to control the mice,
never allowed the shelter of a safe house,
my mother allergic,
my father, a farm boy all his life,
believing animals belonged outside.
And my novice heart, offering
what limited love it could muster,
broken for these brief, unsuspecting lives.
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