Ellen Porter
10/29/07
All I Remember of the Presentation

She speeds through her knowledge:
a train reeling crazily
down its wooden tracks.
rat-a-tat-tat

My mind disengages
sorry to be trapped
between stations.

I slip into fragile mortality
and focus on this desperate body
traveling a fly-away train.

She does not finish til sunset
pulls up to the station window
collects her messages like used tickets
and marches away.


Ellen Porter
10/06/07
Distraction

Birdsong
embellishes silence.
How dare it interrupt
my prayer?

My hands flutter
around my head
in shame.


Ellen Porter
11/28/07
my belly protrudes

i sit waiting for the
words of my Beloved.
my belly protrudes
like that of a donkey:
it holds the words to
my Beloved.
it contracts, pregnant
with anxious words of love.

my belly protrudes
like that of a pregnant donkey.
it belies a foolish body
making me the laughingstock.
but my heart scours
my belly’s gift
making my whole substance
ready for receiving Her words, for speaking my own,
tinkering with the elaborate intricacies
of a puzzle:
union made perfect.


Ellen Porter
10/1/07
Roses

October and the roses still bloom
not in summer profusion
but flower by single flower
white, pale gold and skin-pink,
lavender.

Save a holocaust,
November is inevitable
and will frost the blooms
with granulated snow.

I come to the hammock
and check it for rain
left over from the night before:
too damp to lie down and dream.

I push against the season
resentful
with bitter chill.


Ellen Porter
12/09/07
The Lift

The final days of this year
find me counting out
blessings, banes and breath.

The elevator dies and with that death.


Ellen Porter
12/18/07
Torture

Last night
after a metal gray day of depression,
I dreamed of
torturing
my beloved cat.
I tied her with a rubber strap into a tree, yowling.

I profess to seek the Beloved
but my cruelty is brought to the light
of a bright and swelling summer’s day.
I do not seek the Beloved.
I inflict pain and imprisonment
on this poor body.

I am the orange tabby.
There is no one to save me
but You and my howling self.

my ability to leave the house.
I cannot climb the stairs;
my lungs protest, refuse.

So, I am joyfully confined,
a happy prisoner to solitude.
While others drive off
to chant their prayers and praises,
I sit in my chair,
testing pen and paper,
eating peanuts from my tarnished blue bowl.