Daybreak

Around the nook
beneath the shade
the sun waits to
fracture the horizon.

The day begins surreptitiously
fog sating itself with light.

I have nothing more to do
than eat oranges and wait.

My bones tremble with
the emptiness of time.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

For Margaret Harrison

It is too late for miracles
my friend.
You wear your years like silver lace
your hair white as ermine.
ninety three years
lean toward resurrection,
and I do not begrudge
you that journey.

But I, too,
move toward death.
Yes, I am young
but more than half your age.
I am growing familiar with tumors
and aching flesh.
My soul years are tidied up
and finished like drying hay.
I am also ready
for resurrection.

So, let us leave God in peace.
I promise I will not beg for your longevity
if you will stop hounding heaven for mine.
We have no need for miracles.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Note: Sr. Margaret died June 16, 2008 at age 96.
Ellen died, two months later, August 21st, at age 60.

A Poem Not To Be Shared

There are moments
often now
when my body doesn't fit my skin.
It starts with a flood of impatience
anxiety clinging to nothing particular
nothing at all.
I arch my back as if to unburden myself
of feelings I don't understand.
My legs move of their own accord
and I squirm to find comfort in the
loose springs of my old chair.
Sometimes it lasts all day
and I consider what remedy might be needed
to swaddle the fear.

I must not share these words
but keep them close.
No one will understand.
It is not merely the rustle of anxiety
but something more.
It is death dancing beneath my skin
trying to keep the time
the rhythm
trying to hurry my bones and flesh
into oblivion.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Conversion

Just imagine that today
something different would happen:
one white peach
falling perfect
no bruise, no worm,
into welcoming grass;
a brooklet cradling watercress
clean and cold meandering
the Alabama Hills;
or sunrise
setting Lonepine Peak to alpenglow.
Just imagine one reason
to turn this
unkind and meaningless life
into an impulse of
immeasurable joy.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Toward This Moment

Almost a year
fighting for my life
knitting compromises
accepting the worst
while cradling hope.

And suddenly
(it is not sudden at all
but a silent creeping
toward this moment)
I want to die.

I want to die
but not struggle toward death.
Put down hopes and fears
one by one
like so many boots lined up
on the mudroom floor
and walk away
barefoot and light as sun
slanting through an empty parlor.

It is time to stop
to nod politely
at those beckoning
toward the future
to close my eyes
and wait long moments
for nightfall.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

Nebraska Summer

Back in 1964, my cousin
Barb Kohlmorgan stretched
my summer days
taut across Nebraska wheat fields.
She taught me to drive a tractor. I buried more
corn than I weeded. She taught me to shoot
prairie dogs peeking out of their holes
and to ride a horse across the endless pastures.
She taught me to flirt with her own best friend's boy.
I was a piece apart
growing up in California
known so little.

When Bub lay me on my back on the riverside
and leaned over to take what pleased him,
I flicked sand into his eyes, two fisted,
and rolled safely out of reach.
"Bitch" was his last word to me.

Barb and I shared the basement room
on the farm. A big double bed with eiderdown quilts
where either of us could get lost and solitary.
But one night I snuggled close.
The boys at the campfire had mumbled stories
about a boy...the next town over.
He was a whiny kid and the older boys, almost men,
ran a circle around him out in the corral,
pulled down his jeans and shorts
and cut him like a gelding.

My imagination soured my stomach
left my elbows quaking.
I watched for a morning newspaper.
Never saw a word.
Some things are too secret
to see the light of day.
Still, now, 40 years later
I wonder if he had lost his manhood
irredeemably,
or if the boys around the first
liked to start the new, untamed girl trembling.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

The Rule of the Monastery

If only they had nodded their heads
and let me go on writing poems
instead of driving the sisters to the emergency room
when their hearts stiffened up on them and they needed
surgery or stents or bed rest or to be told
they could go on painting in oils and watercolors
without another things to burden their minds.
But, I did transport them--the frightened nuns.
And I did it well.
Now, years later, through divine providence or the luck
of the draw
I am homebound on chemotherapy, and writing poetry
is all they expect.
Perhaps it is karma.
But after all this time, ideas elude me
And the pencil is dull.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

A Gradual Dying

There is a quaking here
deep in my bones
a rustling like aspen
like bats' wings rising
warm from August eaves.

There is this quaking
set moving by things
too large to see with
open eye:
grief, fear, a gradual
dying of the essential self.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision