Ellen Porter
11/08/07
Cancer

I wander down sandy lanes
footsteps shuffling deeply
pulled closer and closer
to the sea bright air
in breaths half taken
lungs left hungering for more.

I do not know in what ways I differ
from you and from the
multitude of souls I befriend
but different I am:
in the length of my stride
the tilt of my smile
the swollen bulk of this
body I no longer know.

I take care along the sandy lane
that my feet reach forward
toward the green-waved sea
where silver fish
pull their breaths,
their gills wavering
through the salt-tongued depths.
I am drawn on
a creature of age old migration.


Ellen Porter
10/26/07
Prose Poem

For Blocking the Doors

The courageous six stand on the courthouse steps, pride and unity enlarging their hearts. Civil disobedience shouts war is not the answer.

They arrive to sit at trial and we to listen, up concrete corridors to the room with wooden pews and straight-faced men standing guard. Six hearts, still brave but shrinking softly under practiced intimidation.

The magistrate judge opens the door, enters the room as if it were her own: a gray haired woman with sympathetic hands, loving patience, unfeigned interest in these six succinct minds and yearning spirits.

We hear evidence that does not apply. But the pain, the transparent pain of the six, rises, holding the courtroom captive.

They are guilty. Even we, their orderly and eager support, even we know they are guilty but naïve and moral and impelled toward non-violent action.

They are guilty, and with tears edging down her cheeks, the magistrate judge hands out with loving truth a sentence minimal enough to bear and firm enough to bolster the necessary pride of the incarcerated six.


Ellen Porter
10/1007
Integration

is not a matter of deserving.
My father loathed Negroes
and some while before,
the grandfathers and great-grandfathers
locked their shackles around
bruised and bleeding ankles

So not a matter of deserving
but a longing to worship
the same God.

And the beautiful
black face of tribal wisdom
turns her head
dismisses me.

For centuries forgiveness must
flow one way.
There is so much to be repented.
My white body quivers,
yearning for common ground.

Is there no place for seeing
the wide and gracious wombs
in acceptance of each other’s
history and hues?


Ellen Porter
11/23/07
Of All the Obsessions

Of all the obsessions
in this sorry heart of mine
racism is hardest to define
and miserable.

Hafiz laughs at me and demands
What makes you think the Beloved is
white and comfortingly like yourself?

Maybe, in the first place
She beheld the black satin skin
of Her own reflection and said,
This is great!

You are so afraid of detecting
rejection in your own soul
that you resist walking up to
a beautiful black man,
an elegant bronze woman,
and shaking hands, and that you
resist talking like one person to another,
and that you refuse to let your feet dance
in a multicolored, smiling circle
of drums and rattles.

Your sorry heart
loses out on half the shining love
of the universe.


Ellen Porter
9/27/07
Sleep
(after Hafiz)

You are crazy
my sweet friend.
You rise in early morning—
four o’clock again today!—
and you wonder at your
fatigue.

Ellen,
Listen,
The Beloved craves
your sleep.
It is then that She scatters
poems and dreams
in your hair.

So sleep!
At night is best
but a nap at seven a.m. will do
or rocking gently
in the hammock
anytime.

The Beloved
so wants to come near
that I, Hafiz,
may have to rap you on the head,
unconscious,
so She can give Her gifts,
wholly, delightfully,
to you.


Ellen Porter
11/05/07
The Steps Toward Home

Between the steps toward home
steep enough to warrant a railing
cold and rough on children’s shoes
and the gravel laden parking lot

there is a sidewalk
to be shoveled in winter
wandered in summer
the wanderer unaware.

And beside the walk
a strip of untended garden
weeds mostly,
sticking out their spiked and sticky tongues.

But in spring a clean and infinite garden
snow drops, crocus, daffodil and hyacinth.

Today, with a token nod to November
I feel the sticky weeds
but I cannot envision
the star-laden blooms.


Ellen Porter
9/28/07
Water For Water

She made her decision slowly,
my sister,
sliding smoothly like a snake
losing its familiar skin.
She is leaving Lake Erie,
leaving behind the hard, scaly
protection of long use,
to slip
new and shimmering
along Puget Sound.

The Pacific Northwest
pulls her like a magnet—
evergreens, heron and rain—
the evermore urgent yearning
for a home of her own belongings,
and, dancing the pink joy
of laces and frills—
and growing, oh so fast—
there is the irresistible, irreplaceable
smallest offspring:
the child of her child.

I am the one left behind,
cherished like the final
ripening apricot of summer,
hanging alone,
waiting to fall or to be taken.
There is no sorrow in being last,
only a bright and startling awareness
of leaves and stems and final seeds.