Ellen Porter
9/29/07
An Inclination Toward God

If you have ever stood,
sandaled feet poised to follow
your first inclination toward God,

you may have stumbled
in the waiting
jolted against hard earth
and time-thickened air.

And if you have not given up
but resumed your eager pose
you may have been blessed

by the stately line of wild turkeys
crossing a wayward path
and the brilliant, joyful
field of grassy dandelions.


Ellen Porter
10/14/07
dry spell

time trying to
break my words
trying to wrest
syllables
from the waiting page
no refuge here
no turning
back around
the words
are gone
only the commas
and question marks
remain


Ellen Porter
9/24/07
I am Like a Kite
(after Hafiz)

I am like a kite
in the hands of God.

She runs with me
holding the string
and blowing
Her sweet breath
into my body
like bellows to a fire.

I soar in the
dappled sky blue
laughing my utter delight

and wonder
what will become of me
if the Beloved
gets tired and
runs out of breath.


Ellen Porter
10/21/07
My Parents, Away

Two hundred years old
that California oak
or so they say.

Two trunks lifting
from the hillside ivy
light brown trunks
like coffee too thickly stirred.

Two trunks, lifting and rising
and only one bent enough to climb.

My grandmother came to stay
while my parents traveled in the dark.
She saw me one morning
lying on the lower branches of the
wild and comforting oak.

She didn’t let me climb again
and though I loved her
I yearned and my heart yearned
for my parents’ return
up through the light,
home.


Ellen Porter
9/30/07
Royal Fireworks

Handel,
not the Messiah
but Royal Fireworks
usher in the autumn air.

Summer has slipped out
the back door
forgetting to take all its heat with it,
and so my fan still spins,
an electric beater, mixing
summer and autumn warmth
until thoroughly blended.

I hum along with Handel
and, too familiar, I consider
rousting him out
with Vivaldi in his stead.
But I look out the window
see the tips of cottonwood and sycamore
burning with autumn promise
and decide,
familiar as the changing seasons
these three hundred years,
only Handel
or perfect silence
will suffice.


Ellen Porter
11/25/07
The Next Generation

The old peacers gather at the site
to hold banners, raise signs
sing harmonies to peace.
But where are the young ones;
have their spirits failed?

What has happened to the children?
Who will raise their voices for
nonviolence, peace, the ragged art of diplomacy
to follow in our waning paths?

Are we alone in the middle?
Too young to forget
and too old to close our eyes against oblivion?
If we are alone
let us go out with explosions
of undying, irretrievable light.


Ellen Porter
7/22/07
Tree Surgeon

After the lightning storm
the sentinel pine
stands proud but fractured.

Today, the tree surgeon
gazes up through
tangled, wayward branches
to the lightning-black, pine-yellow trunk
and he groans a little to himself.
He does not speak to me.

He puts on climbing gear
and mounts the tree
like a granite wall,
rises from the ground
a spider scurrying up its silken thread.

And then he is there
touching, eyeing, pruning
that great wound.

Later, he tells me
of the needed sculpture,
several feet from the crown.
The rest will likely survive.
And then he says no more.

As he leaves,
he glances back
with longing
to lend assurance to the pine.

Perhaps it is his love of climbing
that prevails,
and his fondness for
the silent trees.