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.