Ellen Porter
2/20/08
When I am Fifty-Nine

There is no company
when one assumes
unnecessary responsibility.

I push open the heavy
day care door—
made heavy to keep
children in or out—
and she tells me
to pull on my hood.
And when I reach
the open walkway,
its squares slippery
with ice under
new-fallen snow,
she tells me to take
tiny steps, to keep
my center of gravity.

I don’t have the freedom
to look around for
cat prints in the snow
or birds hidden in the
crevices of trees.
Listening to her warnings
I lose the beautiful
winter walk and
her tender company.

But I clasp the banister
in agreement to her persistence
all because I love her and am certain of her love for me:
A hefty price for love turned
frantically to fear.


Ellen Porter
1/11/08
Who Said a Good Girl Will Harbor No Addictions?

In the early morning hours
before sun starts the world spinning
in color
I take three or four books down
from the board and brick shelving
and nibble at a few poems from each.

I had finished with the
collection of Mary Oliver last week
and went on bravely to Audre Lorde
who is indeed a wonderful poet
but does not make my heart
lurch, my mouth fashion a smile, my galloping brain
slow to murmuring.

After days of pre-dawn desperation
I give in and pull a volume of Oliver
not even dusty yet from use.

I open to the beginning
inhale deeply like a swimmer
preparing to leap from pool side
to cold, liquid relief
flinging my body headlong with the first lines:

the sun, the grass and delphinium,
the dear, light-pink color of morning.

The dive, the submersion, the long glide
and then I rise to wind and water’s edge
gasping ocean air in cool resuscitation.