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.