Ellen Porter
1/25/08
A Separate Hour

You startle when I hand you
a poem to read.

You didn’t know I owned
paper and pencil and a poetic mind.

Ten years in the monastery
doing chores and studying theology.

Never a separate hour
to take up pen and ink.

Somehow that trade-off—
cleaning floors for poetry

lays heavy over what could have been
productive days.

But I read, instead, until my memory
split, and rolled across the page, unwritten, unread.

I made it through, somehow
fragile and empty of life but sound of mind.

Now I am visited by hospice
slowly dying of cancer,

And the elders can find no other tasks for me.
They leave four o’clock a.m. alone,

my dawning pen jostles paper in perfusion!
Like a three-hole punch ridding itself of circles.


Ellen Porter
2/6/08
Death and Exuberance

Today’s grass cut,
the wandering smell of
a spring grave
or a welcoming of baseball.

It doesn’t matter which
now that winter melts
away its frosted blanket
and leaves the lawn to
better, livelier sport.

Still, the sacred path between
death and exuberance
cannot be measured
or ignored.


Ellen Porter
1/28/08
Graduation

His thesis typed, bound
and presented to the master.
His exams completed, impeccable.
Class work finished
each exclamation point fixed.

He enters the master’s study
approaches the desk.
The master sits garbed in
gown and hood, waiting.

The master says to the man,
“You have finished well. You
are free to go, honored.”

The young man looks anguished
and simply cries out the words,
“But what is it all for?”

The master rises, smiles and spreads his wings;
books on all four walls embraced
by that calling.
He answers,
“Read all of these and then come back.”


Ellen Porter
2/4/08
Leave-Taking

She, on leaving for eleven days,
kissed me solid on the lips and said,
“No funny business while I’m gone.”
Funny business? I replied.
Her eyes darkened to black centered
lunar disks.
“Yes,“ she said,
“don’t get worse and die.”
I promised I would wait for her until spring
until the roses and daffodils
vied toward paradise.


Ellen Porter
1/28/08
Play

A five-year old and
a sixty-five year old
playing together.
The elder holds a toy moose
and tells the child
its name is Mo.

All day long the snow falls
and the child plays indoors.
All day long there is no heat;
the registers are broken.
The child does not wail or moan
but keeps on playing.

The elder does what elders do.

At suppertime the child brings Mo
to the table and hands it to the elder.
She says, “I know something you need to know.”
The elder nods.
“Mo likes to be stroked on the top of the head
like this
and likes to be scratched under its chin
like this.”
The elder nods, takes Mo and
bows to the child.
“We are now connected forever.”


Ellen Porter
2/03/08
Spring: Three Poems

1

Spring is chasing
winter from the playground.
Even snow along the pathway wilts.

2

I yearn for my most dear companion
because she loved me first.
Even the stone beckons my heart toward passion.

3

The pain of springtide
settles in my back.
But I say, “permit the pain.”
I would rather lie down in agony
watching lilacs bloom
than see another unseasonable snowfall


Ellen Porter
2/28/08
There Is No Greater Gift

The day of hardest snowfall
I sit in warmth
with a friend
in a newly furbished hut.

Outside the trees:
boughs decked out
with snow like opals.

Inside, a comfortable chair;
for lunch, soup and smoked salmon,
and all the better,
it is shared with a friend:

A friend who laughs
at the absurd
and cries out at the beautiful.
There is no greater gift.