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.