Ellen Porter
3/02/08
A Game and Flowers

A visitor comes to my hut;
we laugh great belly laughs
and play a game with
tiny colored birds
instead of marbles.

The sun sets and
we stop our distraction.
My guest collects
a fist-full of flowers
for the table.
We feast with our eyes,
our begging bowls empty.


Ellen Porter
4/7/08
Creosote Timbers

After a day of sod-soaking rain
I return to my little cell,
my knees caked with mud
my mind with ashes.

I lean against the lintel
until the shaking of
legs and knees quiet
and I stand, never a prop
to keep me upright.

You sidle up against
my leg and profess
to be my sister.
Now don’t I know
my sister,
the one whose bed I shared
when we were young?
The one whose bed I beat
with chicken filled pillows
until we coughed and laughed
and our mother came,
crossed-mouthed with thoughts
of dry cleaning and
an inner smile?

So, is it really you?
You whose glance of mischief
keeps us upright and sedate
until, not a chicken feather
out of place,
we bow our acquaintanceship
to each other
and aim our pinfeathers
at each other,
our fathers and uncles disgusted
with our child’s play
and our aunts and mothers
softened against April’s
storms,
not one place to rest our
weary legs nor a lap
to grace our adolescent bones.
And so we dance our fatigue
along the creosote
timbers of an earlier time.


Ellen Porter
2/8/08
Geese

Driving by the library
I look for the geese
arranged by alphabet
in the grassy hollow.

They are not there.
Some rune of nature
has urged their migration
not south, but in yardage,
a half mile west.

There they are,
some tickling their
legs and tail tufts
in grassy fen
and others knee deep,
if geese have knees,
in half frozen bog.

I wonder at the ice
around their tidy ankles,
if geese have ankles.
What keeps them in that frozen bed
so close to ignorant insanity,
equidistant from the chattering wisdom of books
alphabet arranged
on the library shelves?


Ellen Porter
1/23/08
Incantation

For Christmas she gave
a flat, blue, plank of plastic
and spelled out instructions
more incantation than logic.

It takes two cups of water
seeping into the open side
of plank—warm malleable water.

Then tiny, five-year-old fingers,
ten of them,
squeezing and prodding and peeling
until the plank becomes a vase.

Two more cups of cold water,
replacing the warmer
and the shape stays rigid
for days, endless days.

I do not know what happens at night.

The child-made gift complete,
an adult, a kindly sage
brings a fistful of
daisies and queen Anne’s lace
in stately affirmation.


Ellen Porter
2/23/08
On Having Poems Accepted
For the Very First Time

I didn’t submit poems
to her magazine;
I had had my fill of rejection.
But a friend befriended her
and introduced her to my poems.

She liked them more than I
and bought three to last
a half-year.

When I read her message,
I whooped
and friends came running.
Half the pleasure of the
acceptance of poems is
the eager celebration of others.

No meditation today
only the vibrant trilling
of excitement in my stomach,
the distracting joy in my soul.


Ellen Porter
212/08
Some Small Flower of Honesty

I vow to lower my self
to the level of pure thought:
not to speak as though I know what I say,
not to speak to others as if they know less than I.
I vow to listen to the words of the elder:
not to seek recognition of honor,
not to claim friendship,
but to be quiet
to be invisible
until some small flower of honesty
blooms in my heart.


Ellen Porter
2/6/08
The Middle Way

i
I wrestle with life and death
and of course I lose.
If life comes up the conqueror
I wonder why it is so sparse.
If death triumphs
I struggle for change.
The only sacred way
is to avoid the tension altogether
and walk carefully
the middle path
amid the fading crocus.

ii
The sacred pathway
hyacinth and daffodils
fallen leaves in piles

iii
The winter moonlight
heavy with a midnight fog
saplings in the dark