Ellen Porter
11/07/07
As I Wait For the Beloved

As I wait for the Beloved
sitting in tepid autumn’s sun
my back leaning
leaning against the maple tree
my mind is calm
my soul content to wait
for the inevitable one.


Ellen Porter
11/18/07
Elements

In earth I am ready
to trade daffodils
for blackened soil,
a new and permanent cradle.

Water finds me waiting,
lapping in cupped hands
from the arid lakeward stream.
The rain holds its breath; draught threatens.

Wind takes air for a jubilant ride
bypassing my troubled breath.
Spinning, twirling, gliding on sunlight,
it no longer requires my respiration.

Fire, lightning borne,
draws ragged maps against the greening sky.
My forehead, torso shimmer with heat
and soon my body, my spirit cast off,
will burn clean away to bones and ashes


Ellen Porter
10/27/07
I Drag Cancer Along

I drag cancer along
like a hermit crab
greedy for
a larger shell.
I sometimes lurch
sideways
not sure of my footing
on tide pool edges.

When I stand
my breath deserts me
and I panic like a child
who loses sight of home.
When I kneel down
to catch a bit of litter
off the floor
my legs can find no pull
to bring me back
to steady ground.
And so I flounder.

The crab can disappear
for hours hidden, invulnerable
inside its whorled shell.
But I must remain seen,
my shell emotion deep.

The softness of this body,
the swollen face,
mothwing fragile skin
and the fatigue, the fatigue
sketch evidence of this
grotesque, unbidden malady.
I would like to scuttle home.


Ellen Porter
12/07/07
My Guest

The first
snow of the year,
branches showing white shoulders
and benches deserted till spring, wet and weeping cold.

I stay indoors
swaddled in dry, soft clothes
a shirt to ward off the cold breeze
sneaking through cracks of window panes.

My guest, new from the Pacific,
pulls on layers of warmth
and goes dancing
into the December chill.

She returns exhilarated an hour later,
sliding to the boot room door
like a child on new skis,
smiling, her nose bright red.

She has come to see me dying
but reappears full of autumn joy,
hardly able to sustain her grief,
handed over by the Beloved to
the exuberance of nature gone wild.


Ellen Porter
10/16/07
Rumi says, “Be kind and honest,
and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.”

My heart flails in anger
at the one whom I
have never befriended.

Before I snip away
his balls
he asks for a jug of water.

I stare at his
impervious eyes,
fetch the water
and fall in homage
at his gracious feet.


Ellen Porter
12/16/07
The Poem, Lost or Stolen

You approach me in chapel.
Your reading, you say,
is either lost or stolen.
My poem.

You look beautiful in
your tunic, nighttime blue,
and in your panic.
I wait in Advent darkness
to see what will happen.

You approach another and
she rumbles through her papers,
me watching, you waiting in anxiety.
The poem appears.

Your face calms;
your voice drops an octave.
You read like a nightingale.


Ellen Porter
11/17/07
Turning South

The golden brown leaves:
a pleated skirt around
the trunk of the sycamore.

Birds still call these branches home
but winter billows close behind
and the blackbirds, south,
will discover warmer ground.

I lie in the leaves
and feel that southward pull.
For a moment I can feel
the fluff and flitter of my
own downy wings.