Ascension

I have lived in hell
and I have returned
to the living.
You say lightly,
"You've been to hell and back."
But you don't really understand.

Before the descent,
poems and stories
sprang like cold fountains of water
up from psyche's depths
splashing clear and fresh
on the desert of my days.

I do not remember
hell itself
(memory cannot bear that burden)
but I know it was
wordless.

And now
here in this new air
where trees bring leaves to birth
and spring birds play on the wind
that softly blows winter away,
now, ascended through the dark,
I do not remember
even how to hold my pen.

from A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Conversion

The monastery cat
patrols garden boundaries
at dawn.
Spraying in the four directions
he claims fertile territory
as his own.

I yearn for god
to stalk my borders
with fierce desire-
a wild, territorial cat
spraying love in all directions
claiming my soul
as sacred space.


Obedience

Before the sun rose
I saw crows
flying south,
invisible thread or magnet
holding them to course.

If I could learn
crow secrets
perhaps one day
I would fly
into the heart of god.

from A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Lamentation

A circle of women
holding the dark
crying the eye
of the world.

To what deity
shall we pray?

God has crucified himself
and Mother Earth
lies dying at our hands.
She weeps her sorrow
as we in turn
weep ours.

What vision is there
what new wisdom
must we learn?
Sophia, Black Madonna
owl, dolphin, wolf or swan
can you bring
the new mythology?

Or is this all there is:
dying earth
hate's bloody shroud
the haze of greed?

Perhaps we are alone
the medicine.
A circle of women
holding the dark
crying the eye
of the world.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Looking for Feathers in the Sierra Nevada
1993

Looking for feathers
teaches new vision.
The trail narrows, and
seeing microscopes to
pinecones, leaves, ants,
bits of wood decorated
by the pecking of birds.

Looking for feathers,
glancing up to honor a birdcall,
the eye is startled by enormity:
a glimpse of glacial snow
filling a bowl of granite
fashioned by forces of ice
long melted,
long rivered away to
arid landscapes below.

The surprise of enormity
sets the body reeling,
dizzying back down to
dependable ground.
You feel part of things
there in trail dust;
matter embodied.

Be careful, though.
Grow familiar with new vision slowly:
hunt grounded feathers first.
Looking at wings in flight too soon,
unfamiliar with wind currents and updrafts,
spiraling out into eternity,
you can lose your soul.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Ellen Porter
2/2/08
Sleep

I.

At night
with all that freedom
to sleep without guilt
I lie awake
taking measure of the day.

At noon
so tired I cannot stir
my eyes close and
my heart is wrapped in quiet sorrow.

A soul, backwards
A backwards soul.

II.

My begging bowl empty
dinner at noon
I cannot stay awake.
But come the moon
I will be dancing
all night
with crickets and worms.


Ellen Porter
2/18/08
The Hills and Passes of Sequoia

Around the Sierra campfire
twenty miles out from other camps
or mountain stores or macadam roads,
we leaned in close to the warmth
and each other’s bravery.
In the morning, with sunrise,
we would climb the pass
twelve thousand feet high,
hovering over the trees and hills of Sequoia.

But early that evening
an angel came into our camp
asking to have some mosquito repellent.
I gave him my half-used bottle
and he glided away,
his feet never touching ground.
(This story is true.)

When morning rose
we strapped on our packs
like so many upright turtles
and struggled up the trail
toward rumors of a wide and dangerous
creek crossing at the top.

The angel approached me from behind, paused long enough
to offer his angel signature:
“Don’t be afraid; I’ll wait for you.”
And he went on ahead.

When I reached halfway
and could see the pass,
I saw the angel,
perched on a rock beyond the creek.

He raised his arm in reassurance and angelic salutation
and then was gone.
Later, at the pass’s summit
I stepped confidently over
the dreaded creek—one step.

From that day on
I have relied on winged voices
rather than the scuttlebutt of those
little less than angels.


Ellen Porter
1/21/08
What Was I Born For?

And what was I born for?
Certainly not, like Mary Oliver,
to look, to listen to the indescribable
treasures of nature; of rabbit
whiskers, the orange feet of birds
on black branches. Oh, I love
the things she loves, but my vision
is lacking.

My vision looks at inner things.
Through the eyes, hooded and glowing
I see fear and a dare.
My smile at this hoodlum
melts his eyebrows down
to crooked worms inching, ungainly
on his adolescent face.

My vision sees the grandmother’s
hope, sometimes her loving joy
poured over and giggling
at her granddaughter’s garbled speech.
Sometimes I see her guarded strain
looking for the perfect job, the
meeting of need and payment.

It is not that Oliver’s world is better,
but it is starker in its reality of death.
Somehow scavengers and carrion
blend together like a puzzle.
And this poet knows the frame.

If there is a god
(and the preponderance of rabbits, birds and grandmothers
lend credence to the hypothesis)
She has prismed vision—
sees the puzzle whole and
loves each pinpoint of
individual grace.


Ellen Porter
2/1/08
While I, Dying

I am dying.
I cannot hide it from myself
any longer.
The hospital bed stands boldly
in the corner
the beautiful light blue quilt
stained with bloody ooze.
I cannot hide it
but I do not like it.
Stay with me
while I die.
Stay with me
through a year of days
if need be, while I,
dying, tremble.


Ellen Porter
2/22/08
Windigo

Without a friend
just nine of us
strangers to each other
save the crew and they were
uncle, niece
and a wayward boy.

The boat was a yawl
seventy-two feet
double-masted
heading toward Glacier Bay.

I don’t know if it was my loneliness
or his countenance—
that of a Raphael angel—
working passion in my heart.
But whatever it was
kept my eyes tracking
his movement
each task memorized
by his hands and
booted heels.

The closest I came
to loving him was when we met, opposite ways
on the stairwell.
Face to face
he clowned and then he
grinned his most
seductive smile.
I flushed,
knowing what I wanted
but too young to make it mine.

These thirty years later
I regret that stubborn immaturity,
but it keeps the memories rich
having what I had
in deep Alaskan water.


Ellen Porter
1/22/08
Wise and Winsome Child

Five-year-old Grace
is a joyful, resilient
temporary resident
of this house.

She tumbles up stairs
runs circles around adults
eating the last of their
roast and ice cream dinners.

I chase with her to an ante-chamber
and she suddenly stops
gasps for air, and
as the great door closes,
asks fearfully
“Do you know how to get out of here?”

I am the adult
so of course I know—
no sharing of my own trepidation.
And then the doors burst open
and we are set free
tumbling into a wicked wind
through new snow.
And she asks,
“Do you know how to get us in from here?”

God’s weather is stronger
than my faith,
so I shake my head, no,
and open the car door.


Ellen Porter
3/02/08
With the Poets

This past forty years
I’ve drunk my coffee black,
wrapped my hands
about the mug for warmth
and let the morning come.

But this year,
coffee keeping company
with the great poets,
I lace the cup with cream
and let word tricks of my own
flow like whole milk
shot warm and rich from
a full udder.

Ellen Porter
4/05/08
April Afternoon

April and no fools,
pockets empty of all
but what’s given and received.
I stroll amicably
down spring paths
no dirt blackened snow.
Only crocus buds
their green heads poking up
though vernal freshness,
vernal earth.

I could not love you
more than these,
coming fresh and swollen
like new pounded dough.
I could not love you more
than crisp and browned
and butter-smeared bread
cut fresh and browned
for early afternoon eating.


Ellen Porter
2/5/08
For Mary Without Anne

You fly to a far city, far flung
from those who love you.
Your sister is dead.
I cannot be with you,
nor would you choose it.
But as cool rain beats
on my winter window,
I send you drops of succor
for your rasping and wounded heart.


Ellen Porter
2/8/08
In Relief of Pain
Prose Poem

Sitting in chapel, pain drilling a hole in my chest, I wonder how it would be to fall over, here, in god’s place and die. When I don’t hurt, I know it is not my heart that aches but something more benign—and so I don’t panic at the pain but breathe in shallow gasps hoping no one will notice, hoping no one will call for help. And when my heart aches, pain in my soul because poems do not flow but only alphabets of words, I hope someone will notice, I hope someone will help. Either way, the pain is interminable for twenty minutes and then a quiet vacuum fills the void.


Ellen Porter
1/29/08
Matterhorn

We walk in alpine forests.
There will be full moon tonight
and he will attempt to climb
to the top of the mountain.
I will watch from the alpine forests.
We will leave me in the alpine forests.
He will not gain the peak.


Ellen Porter
1/16/08
Oceanside Fire

I walk the long beach
at Montana de Oro.
Over my shoulder

the hill lifts its flanks
absorbing the colors of
new burning fire:

the sweet gold of California poppy,
the sturdy lavender cones of lupine.
Running through heaven

I stop suddenly to breathe in
the holiest of holies;
to witness the red-blossomed

blood of the Lamb:
two hundred red-winged blackbirds
in full piping song.

Ellen Porter
2/3/08
“And Have the Bright Immensities Received our Risen Lord?”

When I was young,
twenty years to this earth,
I sang in your garden
about god, the Beloved, on
other stars in far-flung galaxies.
You called me naïve
and Christianity bogus.

You had enough hold on
my young heart
that I was embarrassed into silence,
by my sung glory,
my wanton trust.

But this morning
early as sunrise
thirty years later,
you are in your urn
on your husband’s bookshelf.
He is still not free of you,
and yet,
now with a troubadour’s
labored voice, rusty,
tight-throated, but
free as a migrating snow goose,
I sing of my Beloved
reaching out to far-flung shores.


Ellen Porter
1/19/08
Finding the Beloved

The Beloved does great things for us and holy is Her name.

First I come down with cancer
and She hands me relationships
to deal with. Hard, miserable,
quenching weavings of the heart.

And then I move across a
continent
and She hands me,
not orientation to a new home
but depression—
drugs and chatter and
the therapy of shock.

Now I gallop through hospice days
thinking I should be dealing with death
and the details involved with dying—
a funeral liturgy, coffin,
a burning fire, bright enough to
eat bones—
but She gives me, once again,
relationships.

Do you think She is found
only in friends and family
or also in depression and dying,
in grass and birds and trees
as well?

Do not leave me alone.
Wait with me and see.


Ellen Porter
3/28/08
Impending Death

It is there,
cornering amid the nasturtiums,
waiting for sun-high blooms;
it is there, waiting.

Waiting for a lifetime of events
of joy and despair
making memories
that only exaltation and death
can bring.
Lifetime dreams
born of early sled rides
and hikes up Sierra glens.

It is there
in the German brown bread
baked in coffee cans
molded to the rims and ripples
of time.
My niece for a life time,
and now, with my death,
my impending death,
a dark waiting.


Ellen Porter
2//20/08
my teeth hurt

molar to molar
bicuspids, incisors
my whole jaw
aches with each bite
of ice crème.

the dentist looks puzzled
and offers several guesses.
i know i am doomed.
he sends me off with a
prescription strength tooth paste,
and i try to keep
a positive attitude.

it won’t hurt for a
terribly long time.
in hospice
there are only so many
days to decide:
ice crème and pain
or deprivation.
most days i
court the pain.


Ellen Porter
2/13/08
Sister Mary Philip’s Wake

Sister Mary Philip,
dead at 91,
lies leaden in her box
as others look in
trying to remember
livelier days.

The old ones
wonder why she
should be taken
while they, five years older
and ready to
fling themselves
soul and body
heavenward,
should be left waiting
for god’s good
unfathomable timing.

And the Beloved laughs.
She alone juggles
the old souls and the young
in her timeless, agile hands.
She drops a few, now and then,
and gathers them up again
within her wide and billowing
cloak of many colors.


Ellen Porter
1/17/08
The Earth Weeps For Color

I bow low
my brow to the ground
and I weep.

The world has gone
white and barren.
Its gardens depleted,
it yearns for lavender, columbine red, and gold.

Cold they say is coming.
Just what do they think of today?
I wear two coats and
mittens over my gloves.

The earth weeps as I do.
The earth weeps for warm flame and for color
as I do.


Ellen Porter
2/23/08
Vegetable Soup

I did not sit
in meditation this afternoon
but took a knife to
a pile of vegetables.
Pared carrots sliced in coins
brussels sprouts peeling open
like little cabbages
celery the color
of sea anemone
trees of broccoli
white chunks of potato
and a wandering turnip.
No meditation except the
chop, chop of my knife.
No transcendence
but a wonderful soup
to keep my begging bowl full.