Ellen Porter
5/16/07
Choice Conversation

She is speaking to me
across the table,
fudge-smeared bowls, sticky glasses in between:
after-supper talk.
Behind me, other companions
jabber and laugh.
I cannot hear
what she is saying.
I tell her twice,
I cannot hear.
She forces her voice
and asks a probing question.

Soon I will have hearing aids,
forms molded in perfect silence.
Will that end
the superfluous chatter
of undetermined noise
like Morse code,
heard, received, scrambled?
Dare I hope to hear
the missing grain of wisdom?


Ellen Porter
8/24/07
Generosity

Sr. Mary Margaret has seen
more than eighty years,
her face dissolved in wrinkles
running like dry river beds.
.
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
7/4/07
July Fourth 2007

The night meets full dark
and the crowd looms
crouching like a hunting cat
paralyzed with waiting
breathing in the memories of childhood
keeping possibilities of disappointment at bay.

And then the burst
of colored light and sound:
fountains, comets, spirals.
The people shout their satisfied approval.

A child, awed by colors,
cries out against the noise
stuffing her ears with small fists
and waiting in trepidation and longing
for the next creation.

On and on, light surprises
sounding blasts of canon fire.
And then in sudden, mighty climax
it is over.
Dimmed stars brighten. Smoke dispels.
The feast day ended.

Muted, the crowd,
hardly remembering their country’s revolution,
crawls sated toward their homes and beds
striving toward Independence Day, yet again.


Ellen Porter
8/29/07
Prints of the Living

Afternoons beg your strength
the later day dripping energy
like a spring gone summer still.

And evening has no energy to spill.
You walk when you have to go there
across the tender grass leaving prints of
the living in your wake.

But morning, still shadows of night
waiting in the corners of curtain,
chattering beyond the glass pane,
You feel again the brief promise of life

knowing it will not kindle flame
but will keep you walking, will keep you
anchored to the trilling soil

until the sun pierces midday heights,
loses the shadows of maple and pine,
and reminds you, the full

conflagration of the solar orb,
that your small spark flickers
like a wayward firefly.


Ellen Porter
6/19/07
The Revenant

We walk the roadway
smooth and wide
his fingers webbed with mine.
I relax against his breath
the pull of the moon
equal for each of us.

He is tall
loose in the shoulders
brown in shirt.

There is no friendship I would rather have
and yet I cannot give myself away.
He wants to claim me
wants us to belong each to each.
But I cannot surrender
the whole of my fabric
to anyone.

Can he compromise
these three days--
long, monogamous and his--
giving me sacred time unclaimed
to honor the call of faithfulness
to my self?

And as we walk
we ponder.
How can two be three?


Ellen Porter
1/15/08
Samuel and the Beloved

Yahweh called to Samuel and the boy ran to Eli and said, “I am here.” Eli said, “I have not called you. Go back to sleep.”

Last night the alarm
sounded on the porch
three times.
With each
the wiggle of fear
fluttered strong.

I thought I heard the calling of my name.

Twice more, the alarm.
The police came
to find paper snowflakes,
a child’s project,
glittering out motion to the sensors.

Again I felt the calling.
And a third time.

The Beloved has a funny way
of getting your attention:
Samuel! “Here I am.”
Ellen! “I am here my Friend; you called me.”

I still do not know the purpose of this call,
but I wait, ready,
beckoning to God’s desire.

There is some doubt
about the truth of
this extraordinary story,
yet who, on a bet,
would not answer to
the calling of their name?