Ellen Porter
12/06/07
come to visit the dying

you came to visit me
dying
and together we urged
our memories down, back
ten years to our last meeting.
i crept along behind you
my body disintegrating,
a steamed artichoke
loosening its layers of green,
each leaf barbed against new intimacy.


Ellen Porter
10/09/07
Gleaning Frenzy

She is driving a U-Haul truck
pulling a trailer across
a continent called home,
and her heart is full of the journey
too full to reap pure and
satisfying solitude.

She is not seeking the Beloved;
she is flying head-long
toward the child of her child,
a moth tinkering with flame
no room for the void
where Love has soil to bloom.

Hafiz perches beside her
in the truck
playing with her desperate cat.

He knows if he should
leave her abandoned
she would glean frenzy
like wasps.

So I bless his absence
pray for a smooth and sudden swell,
one rapid wave licking the sandy shoal
at journey’s end,
and I thirst for his imminent return.


Ellen Porter
11/26/07
It Remains True

It remains true
that all things die:
the webbed spider
wraps its gasping housefly
in steel-strong threads;
the bear rustles up mushrooms;
and the great blue
heron or whale
spears its silvery salmon.
And yes, it remains true
that all things die.

But I would like to
eke out more time to
further prove that theory.
I would wander on
watching the eternal fall
of one creature, one potato, one forget-me-not.

And I would wander on
looking to meet a stranger friend,
not embracing death
but for a moment
flinging and dancing
free and breezy
these fortunate, uninterrupted lives.


Ellen Porter
9/11/07
One Hundred Children

One hundred poems
inked by children
school children who
write at their desks
write leaning against a tree in the sun
write flopping kitty-cornered on their beds.
Children too young to know
the pain that stains their paper.
Poems screaming out loneliness and abuse.

May they grow older
their fingers holding pens,
their longings and hopes flowering on paper.
May their loneliness and pain
turn to benign memory
as they catch them
flying by their grieving hearts.
May more poems—
poem after poem—
convert these anguished children into
strong and peaceful elders.


Ellen Porter
11/03/07
Spirit Days

Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls
beg us along to follow
the ancient spirits.
We try to tame them by
giving them names
but they are so many
and we so few.

Halloween we give up to the children.
During the day, from the
muffled schoolrooms,
they prance and hold out their bags,
delighted by their power over sweetness.
And at dusk,
walking tree to tree
they are taken up by their own ferocity.
Still, their mouths are filled with candy,
their spirits are tamed.

But those other great feasts of saints and souls
are in adult terrain.
We quickly remember our own favorite dead
and light candles.
But there are so many others,
unnamed, running ahead
turning now and then to
grin at the scrambling dark.


Ellen Porter
12/01/07
The Ten Thousand Things

My mind cannot grasp
the ten thousand things
hurtling in the chaos
crying “it is so” and
“it is not so.”

I tip sideways with
the conflict of the message
and my heart falters.

My Beloved curls sleeping
in my arms;
I struggle restlessly
against my Friend’s
wind-roughened cheek.

My Love in me;
I in my Love.
Just two of the
ten thousand things.


Ellen Porter
12/05/07
Writer’s Block

At dusk
my heart shriveled
remembering the dawn yet to come.

In the early hours
when I pick up pen and precious paper
I fear I will have no words to share
my stomach turning every which way
the dread of something ruined.