Ellen Porter
4/11/07
Touched With Ice

You say you are publishing
my poems
and you break your
benevolent silence to tell me.

The silence is as much
my reluctance as it is
your nature.
Each of us creates
from that vibrant pool
of stillness
our tongues
touched with ice,
not burning coals
on the days of our birth.

You have taught me
the discipline of
writing every day.
I reach for words
as the sycamore outside my window
plunges upward toward the light.
Sometimes I remember the fiat
and other times I watch its backside
slip away unheeded.

But now you say
you are publishing my book.
The inner pool trembles.
Our silence shatters,
heads together,
plotting.


Ellen Porter
3/6/06
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.