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.