Ellen's Poems

2009-03-17T14:00:00.007-04:00

Benetvision Publications has just published a new book of Ellen's poems, Some Small Flower of Honesty. This link will take you directly to their site to order it, if you wish.

2008-11-03T00:10:00.001-05:00

Dear Readers of Ellen's Poems:
These are the last poems to be published on this site...unless we uncover a few more that we don't know about yet. There are nearly 400 poems here, including the ones published in the book, A Hermit Holds My Heart. At this point Benetvision Publications is planning on producing another chapbook of Ellen's poems. Watch their website for information.

I hope you've enjoyed reading the writings of this beautiful poet, Ellen Porter. I've certainly enjoyed sharing them with you. Susan, osb

Ellen Porter
1/09/08
Worry Babies

The wooden turtle with bobbing head
races the worry babies of colored, stiffened string.

Vibrations from the nebulizer send them scurrying
across the cabinet, heads leaning forward
checking the currents of humidified air.

There is nothing to hold each other back
and so they waver over unfamiliar turf,
oxygen tubing intercepting their intended paths.
So little to do, resting in cancer’s interminable race toward death.
I eagerly thwart boredom and
root the turtle to the finish line.

Ellen Porter
1/8/08
writer’s constipation

these wordless mornings
i sleep in
avoiding pen and paper
till the last too late moment.
and then i sit and
force the verse
straining, waiting for the release
of waste and verbiage.

2008-10-30T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/12/08
With a Lover’s Eyes (after Rumi)

Snow falls and
with a lover’s eyes
I delight in the
carpet of white
the prism of colors
within the sunbeam.

With my intellectual eyes
I check the temperature
and verify it is cold
and I see the road is slick.

My love sees your green eyes
the smooth plump skin
around your arms and waist
and I hunger for my
lips to find yours.

With intellectual ears
I notice your forgetfulness,
the hesitation before naming.

And still I love—
lover and intellectual—
thrown in bed together
with the Beloved Friend.

Ellen Porter
1/04/08
Wondrous Wise

Closest friendship:
two women speak their hearts
with measured words and few caresses.
We do not lie together
but experience our bodies
and souls as one.
The Beloved is wondrous wise
in permitting this
chaste and miraculous love.
The Beloved is wondrous wise
in teaching us to love Her
as we memorize our love for each other.

2008-10-27T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
7/17/07
Whorled and Defined

Early every morning
before the sun even suggests its promised
pink and gold and blue
the color of a faded wild eggshell,
I open her book and read her impossible
prose, her poems describing a world
I have never seen, really seen
with deep down vision, three dimensional
as a spring columbine, blossoms
hanging like Chinese paper lanterns,
bobbing in the gentle, greening rain.

Early every morning
I open the book and read
trying to see with her magical eyes
trying to hear with her fetal ears
sensing the heart-thudding pulse
of a new awakening world.

But I will never write a poem
as tender as hers:
the flash of humming birds,
the eyes of a best-loved dog,
the flowering of spring, summer, fall meadows,
the black water ponds.

I will never write a single line like hers,
and so I open my fist gripping the pen,
unfold the fingers and fling away the sticky web
of forced imitation.
Then unburdened by the impossible and
free to see with my own astounding eyes,
to smell the personal fragrance of my own garden,
to spread ink across the fine blank sheet,
I am surprised by gestational syllables,
as word by word,
my soul’s own midwife
delivers a poem
unique as fingered prints,
whorled and defined.

Ellen Porter
12/22/07
Winter Solstice

longer days now
to seek my love.

Will I remember the grove
where we lay
camouflaged with burnished leaves
branches black now, shining with ebony rain?

I will go into the mountains to
seek that little forest
rest my head against stone
in solitude
weeping into my hands.

2008-10-23T08:07:00.004-04:00

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.

2008-10-20T00:10:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
1/08/08
What Is It You Seek?

All my life
I meant to seek the Beloved
and undirected I searched in odd
and unlikely places.

As adolescent,
I was drawn toward love
and mistook lust for charity.
Lust with a boy’s hand
on my breast and my
hand on his eagerness.
But I did not find God.

And as an older adult,
I urged myself toward
union with the Friend
kissing and caressing
those who,
while satisfying my lust,
never brought me to the vision of Her face.

And now,
celibate in a monastery,
I need only hold quiet
doing nothing but contemplation
hearing the echo of God’s footfall,
seeing the shadow of Her great body
slipping a hair’s breadth away.

2008-10-16T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/7/06
Varieties of Blue

Marigold orange, seacliff blue
flowers in a cup and saucer on unplaned redwood.

It is all my attention can contain
pulled and wheedled, an impossible shrinking of opposites.

She draws me unwilling to the subject of films
a story of love, a tragedy I must, she says, endure.

She does not know how close I am to implosion
cancer forcing simplicity.

I cannot bear artistic pain
(the depression, she assures, will only last a day.)

Spinning slowly, losing, dizzying downward
I grasp for the marigold orange, the cerulean blue.

I do not have a day to spare.

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.

2008-10-13T08:12:00.003-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/30/07
Transformed By Sadness

When I study the poems
of the Japanese
my being is transformed
by their ripping sadness.

Early in my life
I must have suffered loss
so great I don’t remember it,
yet I recognize deep sorrow
as if it were in me
firstborn.

Ellen Porter
1/07/08
Unnamed Apologies

Today’s nights
shorter now than solstice days
shuffle toward
morning sun.

Words find no
comfort today
in ink.
They rasp, industrial
as a wasp’s
many roomed paper nest.

Without rejections
(for nothing is submitted)
poetry stumbles awkward
across blue-lined paper.
I, too,
(were it my journal)
would refuse
to publish.

2008-10-09T00:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-10-06T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
8/31/07
These Burdensome Threads

Today’s melancholy
threads through my fingers, my toes
wraps me in a shroud
so snug and smooth
I cannot wiggle against
its constraint.

I don’t know from where it rises
leaving me paralyzed,
this grief.
I only know it holds me
faster than God
faster than creation, itself.

Yet in this interminable moment
I survive these burdensome threads.
I do not plummet to final darkness.

I cannot weep
and so I wait
not struggling but dissolving
into prehistoric soup.
And then each segment of myself,
floating free,
melancholy abandoned,
refashions me in new design,
part holding to part, and me waiting,
cupped in this binding:
a chrysalis, a cocoon
a possible, perfect reformation.

Ellen Porter
3/14/07
Time Change

If it were
solstice or equinox
my body might
understand.
My blood and breath flow
backwards or ahead
of their own volition.

But this artificial
tampering with time
to mediate daylight
or darken morning skies.
This my body fights
with deliberate rage.
As dark and light
vie for ascendance,
I sit with coffee
in oblivious, dying stupor.

2008-10-02T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/20/07
Therapy

My visitors
have spoken of dying
as if it were a science to be learned
not a mystery, unfolding.

And as a science text
that roils my brain and numbs my bones,
this riddle sets my belly quivering,
uncertain of its labyrinthine path.

Bundled for winter
I break into chilled air
ride through blackened snow
just to hear your therapeutic voice
dissuade my tentative neurosis.

We rip the science and
strew it like new snow.
You hand me back the mystery.
In safe haven,
in solitude,
I can deal with the death rune alone

Ellen Porter
2/3/06
There Are No Promises Left

What is the poet to write
after the peach has fallen
the sunrise has promised warmth
the creek has spent
cold water on ancient rock?

Once the beauty has been given
the memory darkens
and there are no promises left.
The pencil draws across paper
out of discipline
but the soul is hidden
the mystery gone.

2008-09-29T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/30/07
The Shadow of a Rabbit

On my blue lined paper
before I etch ink into permanence

there is a rabbit
nibbling the fringes;

the shadow of a
white rabbit

ears risen in content
whiskers whispering safety.

There is nothing more visible
nothing left to etch in permanence.

Only the shadow of a rabbit
singing in the wet grass.

Ellen Porter
12/31/07
The Shadow of Sea Birds

The shadow of sea birds
wings its way across my paper
pristine in early morning mist.

The shadow exchanges daybreak for evening
eucalyptus stark against the falling sun
nests of heron weathering the years
braced against windstorm and hail.

Old Sol,
two fingers up from the horizon
gives back lighting to a
squadron of great blues
like pterodactyl
coming to nest.

Lower still, the formation
of pelicans gliding
inches above the waves,
dipping now and then for
a throatful of water and fish.

If I should change places
with this shadow of birds
on poet’s paper,
in devastation I would
lose my heart's ease:
waiting and watching.

2008-09-25T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
1/25/08
The Illusion and the Verse

I was so distracted
that I missed seeing
the full moon
rising orange and round
like a fine gourd at sunset.

My mind was on poetry,
how to come upon it unaware
and tack it to the page.
But instead it came to me
unaware and I lost both
the illusion and the verse.

Ellen Porter
7/25/07
The Sentinel

I have not dared to go see it yet,
since the storm,
the sentinel pine, towering, leaning,
sheltering the sunken garden.

So suddenly,
yesterday it was healthy
bearing cones, ornaments hanging,
brown and seeded from greening fingers.
And today it is dead, those seeds
its only hope of future generation.

The storm was unexpected
centered in this garden, in this home.
The lightening blackened a clock on the wall,
asserting its power, stopping time on edge.

But worse, striking, it burned through
the heart of the pine.
Branches hang loose
making it dangerous to lie beneath it,
staring into its shadows, its lights.

And what of the shade it offers;
what of the darkened corner of
garden where small animals
make their homes, their hunting grounds?
And, oh, the birds.

2008-09-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/21/08
Some Winter Days

There are winter days
I never go outside:
no caps or mittens
taken from their pegs.
I curl up like a
turtle warding off
irritation,
and from some deep place
under my blanket,
I catch glimpses of
tortoise shell and snow.

Ellen Porter
2/26/08
The Doing of Things

There are three ways
to get things done
now that I am sick.
I didn’t go outside all day yesterday,
but needed to make my bed,
fill my eating bowl and
fetch my water.

There are some things
that some days
I can do myself
and I feel useful and strong.
I must do what I can to
still feel alive.

There are some things
that some days
I need to ask help
in the doing.
I ask and it is given.
I feel grateful but lazy.
Can I forgive myself the asking?

There are some things
that some days
you do for me without words.
Both know I am unable.
I weep inside at my disability
and at the greatness of your love.

Ellen Porter
12/19/07
The early morning chronicle of poems

needing to be read
not confined to a notebook
to be burned later
at my cremation,
Susan gathered together,
she excited and reverent,
and brought them to the screen:
a computer capable of light and life.

And seventy-two people
dipped into my words
found hope or despair.
And the chronicles lived on
fresher than the world news,
shining benign and malevolent,
read into the steady vitality
of the souls of strangers.

2008-09-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/13/06
Return

Twelve blackbirds
huddle on a wire
warming their feet.

I journey below
entering, leaving
the city.

My thoughts circle and dip
thighs tattoo a rhythm
fingers explore
rubbing one another
smooth as stone.

Each trip it is the same.
I travel the overpass
the blackbirds
wait.

Ellen Porter
11/29/07
Silence and Separation

This morning I rise early
like on so many other days.

But today my soul is ready
to turn away.

Silence and separation are
what I crave,
not soulfulness or wisdom,
not union with the Friend.

Just leave me alone to feel
the autumn wind on my coat,
the cold
battering my stubbornness.

2008-09-15T00:10:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
7/10/08
Daisies

Quick little daisies never seen the light
but reddened by wind and drying air.

But you dance about the dunes
wet and hot.
You dance, dance and leap
leaving not a tempo too short or
a stripe to memorize.

Now I am here alone,
alone beyond all questioning or answering.
In the next few days or across a week or tow
I will meet my maker
My wonderous, breathtaking maker
And then I will be wholly and totally
myself.

2008-09-11T00:10:00.001-04:00

Evening Primrose

The dying don't need much sleep/
I don't mean the ones in bed
propped on pillows,
turned side to side
waiting for their final breath.
The ones who traverse the chasm
between two worlds.
I mean walking doomed
who still have choices.

I have always coveted my sleep
and have risen late
pulled from darkness
to the stark and waiting day.

But now in these new weeks
my body unfolds at five:
the mirror surprise of evening primrose.
I ascend easily
visit the still quiet skeleton
of a sleeping house.
Seven hours are fertile enough
to plant the dreams I need.
For now
the magnet force of dawn
holds more delight
than the fathomless deep
where no compass
finds due north.
I balance day and night
on tiptoe.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-09-08T00:10:00.002-04:00

The Monastery Gardener

She says with no self-doubt
whatsoever
that crows are taking over the world.
Standing among vining tomatoes
in ground long worked by hand
bag upon bag of musty autumn leaves
urging clay, six inches down,
to yield fruit,
she peers skyward
listening to the raucous noise
and bows her head.

She is a Benedictine and
Benedict had an affinity for ravens--
one saving him from a poisonous bit of bread--
but she does not pray to Benedict.
She wishes no benediction on these birds.
She kneels to the ground
plotting the demise of this skyful of crows,
thieving tomatoes.
She bides her time and
pulls up a handful of weeds.
At least this enemy
can be met on equal ground.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-09-04T00:10:00.000-04:00

Prognosis

The cancer lurks
holding my lung captive
growing slowly
a glacier inching along
leaving behind my shattered breath.

They tell me I will
likely die of something else,
some complication, not unexpected
but sudden.

And so I wait.

On bad days I spend time
gathering hymns and psalms
for my funeral.
Yet, this morning I felt
not invincible
but suspended in time.
I ordered antibiotics
for the cleaning of my teeth,
bought two pairs of black shoe laces
though I only have one pair of lacing shoes,
and an eight pack of Dial soap,
gold, unscented.

I genuflect to the inner wisdom
and wave away
the white coated men.

A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-08-28T00:10:00.004-04:00

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

2008-08-25T00:10:00.002-04:00

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.

2008-08-21T00:10:00.005-04:00

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

2008-08-18T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-14T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-11T07:19:00.003-04:00

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

2008-08-07T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-04T00:10:00.002-04:00

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

2008-07-31T00:10:00.002-04:00

The Hermit Keeps My Heart

As the deer yearns for running streams
So is my soul searching for the living God.

Oh, I yearn with the deer
more wild than tamed.
I thirst for rumbling creeks
and crags of granite, bears
for company, and gaping skies.
My God is found in wild places
and I cannot peer out
on city streets
and see divinity.

But there is a hermit next door.
In blue denim habit
she tosses back her head
and laughs at images of God.
One hand nestling the hair of an urchin
she keeps her heart on wild flowers
struggling through the sidewalk crack.
Oh, here is God! Yes, here is God
She urges me to see.

The hermit is a poet
but for days now
her pen is stilled.
I am afraid.
Unless she writes again
How will I ever feed my soul?

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-28T00:10:00.000-04:00

Still in the Early Stages

Pain is a general commodity
Like flowers in a nursery
Showering a variety of blooms
Daffodil, anemone, rose.

No one would buy it though
Not willingly, not with foresight.
Pain--a hideous palate of possibilities
Burning, stabbing, pulsing
And the dull eternal ache.

The mind loosens its hold
And sanity splinters
Instead of a floral bouquet
One broad stripe of grey
And red-like steel.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

Olivia

Ninety seven year old bones
broken, pinned, left hanging
in their attempt to heal.
And skin, surgically split
the edges touching
refuse to mesh.

Nothing works anymore
the way it once did
when marrow filled
more pliant bones.

Yet in spite of this decay
your spirit flickers bright
dulled from time to time
by fear
then shining steady.
Your smile gives lie to fate.
And I do not know
if your hope leaps tenderly
toward this life
or the next.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-21T00:10:00.000-04:00

Lectio

At first glance
I thought it was the wind
caught playful on a single branch.

Across the monastery close
the tree, alive.

But closer concentration
sees the squirrel
tail brushed and pointing
as it leaps from twig to twig
along the larger branch,
not falling.

I dig a rut through the day
seeking God.
Hospitality wanes.
Obedience, stability, conversion
slip unpracticed from my heart.
I waver toward the dark.
And suddenly
there is the squirrel, running.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-17T00:10:00.000-04:00

The Crow or Your Mother's Death

Your sympathy came crisp and tart
as a November McIntosh
and made me wish I bore a message
more palatable than death.

I looked into your eyes
searching for a glimmer of your soul
but sure as silence
what I found was mother-dark:
a crow pecking
at its own reflection
in a pool of midnight rain.

I hunted your borders
for a whisper of grief.
After all
she had been your mother.
But you rubbed your little finger
against your thumb
as if you'd rolled the dregs
of something finished
to toss aside in
uncut autumn grass.

Your anger welcomed her going.
You shifted your weight
and lifted your arms
to wave a final goodbye.
But in the branches of your body
the crow settled in
pecking, pecking.

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-14T00:10:00.000-04:00

Vigil

There is someone dying in this house.
I see it in the hunching of your shoulders
in the way you hold your breath
superfluous
a moment longer than your body asks
and treasure it
against her final expiration.

There is someone dying in this house.
I see it as you walk the corridors
away from me.
We have never spoken
yet your body chants a silent eulogy
my fine-tuned body bends to hear.

There is someone dying in this house tonight.
Will her leaving take your soul away
or carve a space
where living you will find
the shadowed corner where I watch
and use your savored breath
to speak my name?

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-10T00:10:00.004-04:00

Prayer

What if prayer is not
holy words arrowed toward
some sovereign being
close as sound and distant as light?

What if prayer is not
a list
begging, praising, cajoling
Dear God
for current desires and eternal rest?

What if prayer is not
waiting empty in black emptiness
breathing, sighing, breathing
no more aware of god than
the wing of a bird
is startled by air?

What if prayer is
shed free of intent
rid of persuasion
empty of void?

What if prayer is
my burst of passion--
anger, joy, justice, lust--
my burst of passion
overwhelming me
overwhelming me
body and soul?

From A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-07-07T00:10:00.001-04:00

Credo To My Mother, Dying

Hair, cloudy and curled
exaggerates your features
like a mane, too big
for your shrunken skull.

Skin hangs,
no life of its own,
waiting to retire from
covering your bones.

Still, your voice
echoes familiar
calling from mother-lips
pleading, prodding
looking to say
that final goodbye.

But not yet!
Fifty years and
I have just met you
your daughter all this time
but never separate 'til now.

Once more,
hear once more
your child's song
the impossible words
scraping at my heart:
I believe, surely I believe
that you loved me.

2008-07-03T00:10:00.000-04:00

Celibate

I hold you
fragile as a dream
in the cup of my hands.

You move toward me,
ebb away,
a tidal flower.

And my body,
forsaking touch,
nods familiarity
with the ritual dance.

Oh, but my mind,
ever my m ind
reaches out to caress
your vivid, unsuspecting spirit.

from A Hermit Holds My Heart
Ellen Porter
Benetvision

2008-06-30T08:03:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-23T00:10:00.000-04:00

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

2008-06-19T16:11:00.002-04:00

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

2008-06-09T00:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-06-05T00:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-06-02T00:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-05-29T00:10:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
1/24/08
Anatomy of a Poem

After reading the great poets—
Ryoken, Oliver, the Haiku Masters—
I search for something to
roll around in my mouth
like two-toned marbles.

The poets pull lines out of
nothing—sandpipers
running with the tide
or a longed-for lover
alive in the memory of damp thighs,
yet gone.

How do I find a thing
so mundane that I can
fashion it with words
and in early morning darkness
make it gleam?

Ellen Porter
2/5/08
February Rain

While it should shower snow,
the black skies of three a.m.
loose drops of winter rain
and are split by arrowy roots of lightning.

The birds huddle on power lines
breathing breath by breath of the cold months.

Nowhere can I see green in this midnight light
nor could I see it again in daytime.
It is a season of darkness
split open, moment to moment
by untamed electric spark
and overwhelmed by
drums of incipient thunder.

Ellen Porter
2/1/08
Ice Deity

February freeze.
A few days ago, in another month,
warmth enough to push
sprouts of crocus through the dirt.

And today it freezes.
I cannot see the one
who brings the cold,
the zero weather,

but I know she is there
carrying ice in her woolen bag
dropping icicles like spears
planting cubes in the weary earth.

With rain and ice:
winter’s cocktail,
she will relish her drink
like nourishment.

But I cannot see her;
I will not bid her welcome.

Ellen Porter
1/19/08
My Questioning Heart

They arrived late last night
reaching the far span of bridge
from Oregon to Erie.
An air-bridge
holding them aloft
incredibly
not loosing them from cloud and vapor.

I was home alone
waiting in sleep as they landed
with stomach lurching
heart trembling strength
and then the baggage and the rented car.

I waited, sleeping, as they drove
through the city
familiar from former times
and then they parked and
lifted their bags by ancient
elevator—
a metallic inner gate,
a green or kumquat door.

And they came to my hospice bed
and called my name.
I half rose in welcome
and accepted them both,
niece and great niece,
into the loving circle of my questioning heart.

Ellen Porter
1/30/08
She Listens

She listens softly
gathering my pain
like sandy starfish in a bucket.

I poke at an arm
that falls off
brittle and torn.

It will grow back.
It was injured before;
but new pain leaves room
for new growth.

I tell her of my impending death.
She sits stunned by my clarity.
A therapist, stunned.

She sits very still
a long-necked heron
waiting for the silver fish.

And when it comes
she ignores the flash
and drops her eyes.

There is no therapy for moments like this.

Ellen Porter
2/18/08
The Dry Season

The rose bush
with shoots of thorns
no blossoms

The morning bird
eyes closed with sleep
lying in its nest of grasses
no song

The river
water flowing reluctantly
threading its way around stones
no fish

The poet
stomach empty
head devoid of lovely thoughts
no words.

I wait
looking for the Beloved face
when roses blossom
fish roast over an open fire
and accompanied by birdsong
the words flow nectar sweet.

Ellen Porter
2/16/08
Uprooted

My father, the farmer,
moved from Nebraska
and lost his roots.

He was brave and simple
and sank new roots
in California:
strawberries and oranges, apricots
the army and
a wedded wife.

He thrived and from
his tendrils, he raised a family,
sprouted two daughters
who were nourished and loved and grew.

He seemed happy here
out West.
But I wonder, still,
ninety-one years later,
if he didn’t dream of
wheat fields in Nebraska.

2008-05-26T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/9/08
An Abandoned Hut

Years ago you were
bright and healthy and mean.
Then your aorta tore open
and you combed death
back into its rightful field.

Today you offer me a book
on energy, auras and healing.
I can see it excites your spirit,
though I wonder why you have not been healed.

Your voice stammers and your gait,
but you are still bright
and not so mean.

I read and feel my energy rise
like the full moon beside

Ellen Porter
3/12/08
Each Grain of Rice

Each grain of rice
in my bowl
soaked in butter and salt.
How I love my breakfast!

But, oh—how is it
for the farmer—
scattered, watered, collected
all a season’s worth?
How it is loved by him!
His season’s worth
how it is loved
and loved.

Ellen Porter
2/27/08
I Waken

I waken,
fingers cold at eleven thousand feet,
inhaling air that still holds
yesterday’s warm scents
of shooting star, columbine, and
exfoliating alpine granite.

One more stretch
and I emerge, shivering
toward mountain coffee
and hotcakes
sprinkled lavishly
with blueberries.

They told me to
beware of bears
but dawn brings no fear
and hand over hand
I release the ropes
and lower breakfast to the ground.

Before lighting the camp stove
I bow in the four directions.
The Beloved quivers with joy.

Ellen Porter
4/08/08
My Psalm Book Lies Open

I do not do Rumi proud.
Memory comes and goes
like scratchy ink from a
ball point pen.
I scratch the paper
like two toads—
their frog legs in sand
pushing, pulsing
through last night’s rain;
What can I tell you now
about memories and golden oranges
about juice running through my fingers
and down my chin.
Nothing is happier than this.

My psalm book lies open to
Wednesday morning, Wednesday.
Wednesday week three. And when I waken,
I do not know if it is morning or night.
I wait for clues, then have to ask.
It is Tuesday morning.
I will have a shower after prayer
and then out to breakfast with
Sheila, Susan, and Marlene.
Later we will be caught.
Caught against pancakes and syrup.
Against syrup and blood sugar.
One more thing I have to ask.

Ellen Porter
1/27/08
Seven For Supper

Seven were home
but no supper to serve;
we were forgetful rather than lazy.
We rang a bell and
gathered for prayer
Evening Praise filled with smiles,
with sighs of gladness, relief.

Someone hurried off for sandwiches
and we sat deep into the night
laughing, eating, enjoying
the company of a full house.

It takes so little to taste a bit of heaven:
deep prayer, good food
and abiding forgiveness.

We passed the night in splendor
only to wake again in the morning
looking for the marvels of so much more.

Ellen Porter
2/26/08
The Doing of Things

There are three ways
to get things done
now that I am sick.
I didn’t go outside all day yesterday,
but needed to make my bed,
fill my eating bowl and
fetch my water.

There are some things
that some days
I can do myself
and I feel useful and strong.
I must do what I can to
still feel alive.

There are some things
that some days
I need to ask help
in the doing.
I ask and it is given.
I feel grateful but lazy.
Can I forgive myself the asking?

There are some things
that some days
you do for me without words.
Both know I am unable.
I weep inside at my disability
and at the greatness of your love.

Ellen Porter
2/28/08
two days in a snowy hut

it could be said
it was wasted:
no meditation,

but reading novels
taking naps and
playing gin rummy.

the begging bowls are china
and the serving dish
filled with Gala apples naval oranges, and cantaloupe.

we set the table with napkins and forks
and then, with snow in our eyes, sweet juice in our mouths
we give thanks for being
mendicant monks.

2008-05-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/7/08
Alpenglow

It has been many years
since I have seen Mt. Whitney.
It has become a highway for hikers:
The tallest peak.
I have no desire to climb it.
In my old age I would be content
to watch from low in the
Alabama Hills
as the mountain flushes
pink in alpenglow.
The Beloved shows herself
in myriad ways.
I do not have to scale the peaks
to be in Her presence.
Ah, but I am caught up
a continent away.
What can the Beloved
possibly have for me here in Pennsylvania?

Ellen Porter
1/22/08
Drumming Circle

In a circle of burnt orange armchairs
in the convent chapel
the women—
the sisters and friends—
wait ready for
the incipient rhythm to begin.

It is mine
the cancer ridden body,
that presents itself for succor.
And so it comes to me
to start the beat.

Before hands stir
I warn
I may not have strength to lead—
that another may need to
grab the rhythm and run.

And so we begin
twelve in all;
ten women, a girl child and a baby miss.
(The young ones beat their fists into power.)
I beat in a rhythm of four
and the dark drums follow,
smoothly, evenly
until I change to patterns of three.
They stumble a bit and then
waterfall their hearts
into new falling play.

I do not need to
give away the beat.
I grow stronger
until the time to put away
drums and hearts and rhythms.
Then I bow low to the sacred
and stumble to my cell.

Ellen Porter
1/18/08
Hunger

Hunger
I cannot describe it—
even as poet—
because I have always had
a loaf of bread and a cup of milk,
accepting what seemed inevitably mine.

But ask the child
shivering in the soup kitchen line,
What is hunger?
He pretends, at first, that I am
not talking to him.
Why would an adult want to know?
Then he whirls around to face me.

“I don’t hafta be here,” he defends.
“It was my sister’s turn for dinner
so I thought I’d catch a bite here.”

Can you tell me what it is like,
being hungry?
“That’s a stupid question.
Hungry is what you feel
when you feed the last soup to the baby.
He settles into your arms
and pulls on the bottle, and waves his
fists in the air. And you see him smile.
Hunger is having a little soup
and giving it away.”

Ellen Porter
2/10/08
Morning Distress

I.

I waken with disappointment
falling through the cracks
in my heart
like leaves of the maple
beside the wandering path.

I cannot remember the dream
that spawned this distress
but it stirs my stomach
like the third cup of coffee.

I would like to lay it down
this lump of discomfort
and walk softly
along the rain-filled pot holes
of winter.

II.

Morning’s discontent
dream-born and so tedious
tamps the poet’s soul

Ellen Porter
3/19/08
Scribbled Out, Scribbled In

When I was young
I took my mother’s hand
in the warmth of winter.
I felt guilt
in the closeness of that private grasp.

Still later, the spring buds welcomed
my wayward spirit.
Watercress clings to icy banks;
drips brittle lettuce:
stalactite against
weary stalagmite.
Dripping and dripping.

Ellen Porter
1/17/08
The Democratic Process in the USA

I arrive at the polling place;
an elementary inner city school
where children and parents know squat
about the candidates.

Eight o’clock and I am tenth to vote;
the school breeds a generation of apathy.
Parents drop off their children
looking forward to having a quiet day,
but they do not stop at the polls.

Inside the volunteers fumble for my name.
(If I weren’t there to help, would I
vote another’s choices?)

The computerized voting machine and
even I, computer educated,
need to question the process.
It is not easy when
the government makes things safe.

I pull the lever to record my vote.
It grinds my crunching choices
into light and they disappear.

No paper trail.
I so regret the possibilities with
no paper trail.
Perhaps the Swiss should be called in to monitor
our one-time democratic process.

Ellen Porter
2/21/08
Truth and Friendship

Yesterday I told you the truth,
the hard words that
stung you to the bone.

And all day long
my stomach ached
while you smiled and
drew me near.

It is essential to
expose the truth
or our friendship
will be hollow as a tree,
lightning struck.

At times you grow
angry with me and
we survive it, whole.
At times I grow angry with you
and we abide,
strengthened.

You flail at me
with your tongue.
I grab at your soul
with my pen.
They are the same.

But, oh, my dearest friend
neither of us enjoy the
pain we strike in
each other’s heart.
We cry for deep-set forgiveness,
a geode broken open
to reveal its ornate, hidden crystal.

2008-05-19T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/24/08
Acceptance

I write a poem
three poems
and a wise one
enters my cell.

We meet each other
walking around the room
saying not a single word
but both of us
grinning and grinning!

Ellen Porter
2/24/08
Dr. Laukaitis

Margaret, my doctor,
enters the examining room
clearly late, as expected.

Blond hair, long as her shoulders
she comes up to my chin
and she smiles and speaks
as though she loves me
most of all her patients.

She tells me I will
probably die within six months
and reads the words of my poems
that she thinks will outlive me.

She reviews my body
inch by inch and
makes small adjustments
to ointments and pills.

I remind her
if things go as prophesized
I will see her only
three more times.

She takes both my hands in hers
and prays to her
loving, evangelical god.

Ellen Porter
1/30/08
Hospital Bed

My new bed
of steel frame—
I can adjust
the height of my head.
It lets me breathe.

My old bed
of comforting wood
and even mattress
lies taken apart
stored in a cupboard.

How can I stay angry
with this new bed
when I sleep nine hours
able to breathe?

We will try to be friends,.

Ellen Porter
1/31/08
Mendicant

I.

Living in the monastery
penning verse day after day
I am fed three meals
and don’t need my begging bowl.
Ryoken, come feast with me.

II.

You not only speak
as prophet and sage
but side by side
with Ryoken
you don the robes of the monk
and live your verse.
What grace it is to
brush by your shoulders
and grin.

Ellen Porter
3/13/0i8
Roast Pork and Spring Potatoes

Two women
welcomed to our table;
roast pork and spring potatoes.
Our hearts need nothing more.

Laughter fills the air
with word games:
óregáno and oregano,
alumínium and alúminum.

Two nations meet
across ocean depths:
no animosity or despair.

It is the women
bringing peace to the world,
our hearts too filled with joy
to sing war songs.

Ellen Porter
2/4/08
The Definition of Community

I.

They cared for her
enough to listen:
her elaborate tale of a
week’s visit to
an enchanted city.

She needed to tell it
to make it real;
and she called us back
if our minds or feet
wandered.

The magic of the telling
was not in the story
but in our love,
honor and holy inclusion
of the tale-bearer.
This is the definition
of community.

II.

She told her tale
and captured, we listened.
What holier love
is there to be found?

Ellen Porter
10/22/07
Traveling Home

Away from home
greeted by a palette of strangers
I stare out
timid, piercing
and see my illness, reflected,
flickering across those inquisitive faces.

I pack my boxes, nearing visit’s end,
clothes and medicine and myrrh
tucked away against my burial.

We will travel home today
and as the miles unwind
I will change, a chameleon
nearing water.
Lake Erie once again
holding safely in its wind waves
my translucent, malleable soul.

2008-05-15T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
3/09/03
A Winter Chrysanthemum

You are a hermit,
ill at ease,
trying to live your wisdom.
Every day you are humble,
claiming your lowliness
your insignificance.

How I wish you could see
for yourself, your brilliance,
never changing a bit of your nature,
coming to full blossom:
a winter chrysanthemum.

Ellen Porter
2/17/08
does the poet—

the poem--
have an obligation to speak
literal truth?

or can it weave its
words poetic
to grasp the deeper meaning
out of simple, imagined
birdsong?

when you ask
“did this really happen?”
or “who is this dappling
your poem?”
i must answer
with staunch certainty
from the liquid world of dreams,
“it is true! it is all true!”

Ellen Porter
2/14/08
Her Mother Heard Her Singing

At five years old
Grace sat quietly in church
no wiggles or whines.

She liked the music best
and would sing along
to words and tunes
she didn’t know.

Later, at home,
her mother heard her singing:
the melody certain,
the words clear.

“What are you singing, Grace?”
her mother wondered.

“That song in church
when they handed
people crackers and juice.
“Blessed at this table:
Yum, yum, yum.”

I don’t remember the words we sang,
but this version seems
infinitely better.

Ellen Porter
2/26/08
Pushing Into March

This morning
before daybreak
the thermometer hovers
around eighteen degrees out doors.
White dust decorates the grass
the blackened trees.
And piles of snow
play hide and seek in
the corners of the playground.

February closing in on March
the first stalwart shoots
poke out and then nestle
in a pocket of protecting snow
dreaming of being crocus
daffodil and hyacinth.

I do not go out
but dream, too,
of blossoming,
healthy and full-grown
in warmer, softer days.

Ellen Porter
1/18/08
The Beloved Has a Wild Streak

The Beloved
has a wild streak.
She likes to kick up her heels
and dance circles
around the dervishes.

Sometimes she gets
so carried away
that dust scatters over
the cities, mountains and desert.

The cities are the worst.
Dust blots out sidewalks
and towers
until only merchandise is left.
Merchandise and credit cards.

Sometimes it blusters
around the mountains
leaving cliffs unnoticed
until the hearty hiker falls.

It shrouds the desert so that
cactus spines are invisible
and puncture those who are
unfortunate to be in that aridity.

She laughs, delighted with her antics.
You see, she is not only the god of love
but also the god of mischief and despair.
Our sinfulness is the result of
her dusty dancing
for with that whirling dust we cannot see.

It doesn’t matter.
Whether we are lovers or
mischief makers
or merely victims
we sit straddling her lap
her arms holding us tight.
We are her antics and her eternal delight.

Ellen Porter
2/10/08
Today the Pen Lies Awkward

Today the pen lies awkward in my hand.
If only I could hold conversation
with Robert Frost or Mary Oliver
perhaps the words would
run together, overflowing
with line after line of
orchestrated meaning.

They are here in poems
pointing the way
to be sure.
And that is good
but somehow less
than meeting one another
eye to eye and flesh to flesh.

2008-05-12T00:10:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
1/26/08
A Sprig of Sage

In the middle of night
I awaken with half spent sleep;
Cracks in my elbow grind against my sheet,
the nasal prongs from oxygen plug my nose.
Neither lets me sleep.

So I rise and brew coffee,
take many tablets
and breathe in medicated air.

And finally I settle down to read
Ryoken—I fuss about so much,
as he smiles in the moonlight.

I would be willing to trade his cell for mine.
He has learned patience while I
flutter fingers into productivity.
He needs only his begging bowl and a sprig of sage.

Ellen Porter
2/2/08
Death Is Not Abnormal

Death is not abnormal;
everyone does it.
We just don’t think
about it much
until we are gentled
into its process.

The Beloved has lent
us too much beauty
to be fixed on
disintegration.

We fly around
garden and sea
flapping our lively wings
until we believe
there is no stopping us.

And then it comes.
One moon-filled night
just a tiny fissure
a tiny awareness
of, oh so normal,
death.

Ellen Porter
2/19/08
Great Blue Heron

The grassy expanse
holds its attention
as it glides above:
crested grey head
a six foot wingspan
legs straight out behind,
the rudder of a boat,
giving direction through
nickel blue lake air.

It circles once: the meadow
rich in rabbits, toad and squirrel—
provides ambiance, but no meal.
And then the bird back-paddles
with its spacious wings
and lands, one-footed
in the cold Erie water.

Straight as a redwood
silent as stone
it waits for a meal of fish
to pass its way.
All day long it may linger,
the meadow flourishing
with unmolested life.

Ellen Porter
1/23/08
Macabre

Rising two hours after
midnight sucks life out of me
two hours before the poem
is blown to fullness or not
blown at all
rising, I take pen and ink
to see if night darkness
expands life beyond all light
or if it cavorts, unbidden with death.

There is one, a successful poet,
who says they are the same movement:
life expanded, death cavorting
and so, sitting in the poet’s chair
I am unclear if my toes and elbows
throb with nascent life or
play within death’s inner hollows.

Ellen Porter
10/22/07
Tavern Songs

I don’t know if it was
spirits that sang or if
it was the pinnacles themselves
rising high above the meadow floor.

But the Beloved was there, I know,
blending Her harmonies with the others
singing
first tavern songs
and then the Gloria.

It was a thousand nights ago
maybe two thousand
and my heart has never
lost the pain of that delectable union.

Ellen Porter
2/14/08
There is No Promise

There is no promise
that I will join
the Beloved in six months,
though hospice hopes I will.

The doctors make bets
like gamblers at a
blackjack table.

But I don’t feel like dying.
I follow footsteps closely
here on earth,
the prints of the Beloved
and even in winter
it is enough.
I smell her orange blossom perfume.

2008-05-08T00:10:00.000-04:00

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.

2008-05-05T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
3/01/08
A Pile of Vegetables

Begging all morning
and still my bowl is empty.
Hafiz grabs me by the neck
and shouts loudly in my ear.
You are a lazy oaf!
Look at the pile of vegetables
at your feet.
Too blind to pull out your knife
to scrape the carrots and potatoes
the lovely onions.
Here, I will help your
lackadaisical hands,
and then we can dance and holler
while simmering
split pea soup.

Ellen Porter
2/13/08
Dabbling With Rumi

This morning I rise late
and have little leisure for poetry.
I dabble with Rumi
then try the woven words
of my own tongue.

I wait for the Guest
to visit
the Guest who makes
all shine like gold
like prisms in drops
of unexpected rain.

The Beloved laughs at
my tense betrayal of time;
She is everywhere
at each moment
and I have lost nothing.

Ellen Porter
2/9/08
Glinodo

There is a chapel
hidden in the sycamore woods
overgrown with spiders and weeds.

No one goes there but me
and I only to smell
the rough tang of old wood and nails.

At one time
it must have been god
the builders sought.

Now, that dream abandoned,
I am satisfied with
winter silence and
piles of fallen leaves.

Ellen Porter
2/22/08
Learning to Walk

Like human beings
following each other
a few steps apart

the wild turkeys
cross the road
in single file.

They do not speak
one to the other
or gobble.

No gossip, no tales
exchanged
just learning to walk

row on row.

Ellen Porter
2/15/08
Passion For Her Presence

I come with a list
to the doctor.
We talk about
item by item
and find treatment
for each.

If it were only
so easy to
find the Beloved Guest.
If She is playing
hide and seek
one remedy and I find Her;
or if she is watching
as I sulk in loneliness,
one caress.

But it is not so.
She remains hidden
until it pleases Her
to be found,
and when I sulk
she waits for me
to mature to my
god-given age.

The Beloved Guest
abides in Her own time
with her own rules.
And still
my heart stirs with
passion for her presence.

Ellen Porter
2/21/08
Some Winter Days

There are winter days
I never go outside:
no caps or mittens
taken from their pegs.
I curl up like a
turtle warding off
irritation,
and from some deep place
under my blanket,
I catch glimpses of
tortoise shell and snow.

Ellen Porter
1/21/08
The Visit

How many months now
have I risen before dawn
to brighten my eyes with
the words of the great poets?

I clamber up into the poet’s chair
and wait for words, fresh as the smell of
a newborn’s head
to settle onto blank paper
through my old, green Parker pen.

But yesterday,
the house filled with guests
dearly loved people, and
the only words upon my page were stale as a
two day old bagel needing
cream cheese for swallowing moisture.

The guests—my family—come to
balance time. I am dying but
not quite yet.
My niece says she doesn’t want to tucker me out,
but also wishes not to ignore me.

We all must find a balance:
my niece, my words, the early
morning tilt of my pen.

2008-05-01T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/29/08
A Melting Place

They say icicles hang
from the eaves of a house
with little insulation.
The ice seems permanent
like organ pipes
until the sun melts
away their final chords.

I wonder what comes
of a person
standing out in the frozen air
until the day’s heat
works its way through
muscle and blood to
an unexpected melting place.

Ellen Porter
2/03/08
Crossing the Lintel

Seven—
lucky number—
women sit around a table
discussing a book
already read by each.

As we talk
our facades fall away
and we see each other
rather than the story,
each to each.

Every one of us becomes
the lover, the loved and
the curious contender
for the most unique.

At hour’s end
we close our books
tuck them under protective arms
and welcome the facades again
as we cross the lintel
becoming our accustomed selves
burning the new and ferocious identities
for yet another week to come.

Ellen Porter
2/3/08
Gifts For the Longest Journey

My cell
is cluttered again with
knick knacks and gifts
from those who wish me well
and have no other way to show it.

If they only knew
a tidy cell would be their greatest gift,
perhaps they would come and take
what I want but do not need.

The real gift:
a sacred, bare-walled cell
with room to bounce off a
mendicant’s prayers.

Ellen Porter
2/21/08
lnterconnected Ones

My intercom
connects this room
to the next
just as this world
is connected to another.

Pine needles
connect this world
to the next
just as this world connects the earth
to interplanetary other.

I am disconnected
day to day from
one world step by step.

My mind holds
this world from another
as I wait for
final breath and this
from next to next.

Ellen Porter
1/24/08
orange

in the morning
i eat an orange left out all night
against the cold.
refrigerated in the evening
they hurt my teeth
but in the morning
i can peel away down to the pith
without aching fingers or gums.
such a blessing
so early in the morning!

Ellen Porter
2/25/08
Some Tidbit Worth Saving

I

I remark
repressed with fear
that there are
no poems left.

My therapist shouts
It is a trick!
There will always be creation—
poetic words
stuck in your craw perhaps—
but there will always be
some tidbit worth saving.

As she is shouting
she calls to Hafiz.
Close by, he scuttles up
sits excited by her side;
with raven eyes
they watch me.

My therapist and Hafiz
rock back on their heels
and laugh.
Tears of hilarity running
down their cheeks.
The therapist gasps:
Write about this!
Your pen is scribbling
your ink spreading
words into poetry
They shout together
You are being tricked!
In the moment
a poem is borning

II

I whine in despair.
My ink is dry
no poems left.
Hafiz shouts
You have been tricked!
The well of words
is never dry
only the ink of your pen.

So get out of your bed
you lazy oaf
and dance with me.
We will shake the poems
out of the tree of
your persnickety soul.

Ellen Porter
2/27/98
The Splitting Place

The frog rests
its body on land
its strong front legs
anchored in the river.
And split like a
kaleidoscope
its eyes—
half in air and
half in water.
It sees both worlds at once.

I am that frog
suspended between
dry earth and
the watery depths,
between the obligations
of this dry oasis and
the liquid world of dreams.
Here, at the splitting place
the Beloved waits.

2008-04-28T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
3/02/08
A Game and Flowers

A visitor comes to my hut;
we laugh great belly laughs
and play a game with
tiny colored birds
instead of marbles.

The sun sets and
we stop our distraction.
My guest collects
a fist-full of flowers
for the table.
We feast with our eyes,
our begging bowls empty.

Ellen Porter
4/7/08
Creosote Timbers

After a day of sod-soaking rain
I return to my little cell,
my knees caked with mud
my mind with ashes.

I lean against the lintel
until the shaking of
legs and knees quiet
and I stand, never a prop
to keep me upright.

You sidle up against
my leg and profess
to be my sister.
Now don’t I know
my sister,
the one whose bed I shared
when we were young?
The one whose bed I beat
with chicken filled pillows
until we coughed and laughed
and our mother came,
crossed-mouthed with thoughts
of dry cleaning and
an inner smile?

So, is it really you?
You whose glance of mischief
keeps us upright and sedate
until, not a chicken feather
out of place,
we bow our acquaintanceship
to each other
and aim our pinfeathers
at each other,
our fathers and uncles disgusted
with our child’s play
and our aunts and mothers
softened against April’s
storms,
not one place to rest our
weary legs nor a lap
to grace our adolescent bones.
And so we dance our fatigue
along the creosote
timbers of an earlier time.

Ellen Porter
2/8/08
Geese

Driving by the library
I look for the geese
arranged by alphabet
in the grassy hollow.

They are not there.
Some rune of nature
has urged their migration
not south, but in yardage,
a half mile west.

There they are,
some tickling their
legs and tail tufts
in grassy fen
and others knee deep,
if geese have knees,
in half frozen bog.

I wonder at the ice
around their tidy ankles,
if geese have ankles.
What keeps them in that frozen bed
so close to ignorant insanity,
equidistant from the chattering wisdom of books
alphabet arranged
on the library shelves?

Ellen Porter
1/23/08
Incantation

For Christmas she gave
a flat, blue, plank of plastic
and spelled out instructions
more incantation than logic.

It takes two cups of water
seeping into the open side
of plank—warm malleable water.

Then tiny, five-year-old fingers,
ten of them,
squeezing and prodding and peeling
until the plank becomes a vase.

Two more cups of cold water,
replacing the warmer
and the shape stays rigid
for days, endless days.

I do not know what happens at night.

The child-made gift complete,
an adult, a kindly sage
brings a fistful of
daisies and queen Anne’s lace
in stately affirmation.

Ellen Porter
2/23/08
On Having Poems Accepted
For the Very First Time

I didn’t submit poems
to her magazine;
I had had my fill of rejection.
But a friend befriended her
and introduced her to my poems.

She liked them more than I
and bought three to last
a half-year.

When I read her message,
I whooped
and friends came running.
Half the pleasure of the
acceptance of poems is
the eager celebration of others.

No meditation today
only the vibrant trilling
of excitement in my stomach,
the distracting joy in my soul.

Ellen Porter
212/08
Some Small Flower of Honesty

I vow to lower my self
to the level of pure thought:
not to speak as though I know what I say,
not to speak to others as if they know less than I.
I vow to listen to the words of the elder:
not to seek recognition of honor,
not to claim friendship,
but to be quiet
to be invisible
until some small flower of honesty
blooms in my heart.

Ellen Porter
2/6/08
The Middle Way

i
I wrestle with life and death
and of course I lose.
If life comes up the conqueror
I wonder why it is so sparse.
If death triumphs
I struggle for change.
The only sacred way
is to avoid the tension altogether
and walk carefully
the middle path
amid the fading crocus.

ii
The sacred pathway
hyacinth and daffodils
fallen leaves in piles

iii
The winter moonlight
heavy with a midnight fog
saplings in the dark

2008-04-24T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
2/19/08
A Flourish of Rhythm

A circle of women
calls wisdom into their midst.
Holding drums their
fingers tremble in anticipation.

They look to the one
who is dying
look for the measuring beat
and so she begins.

A simple rhythm
sounding the full
resonance of the drum.
The stick finds center skin
and the women of wisdom follow.

The dying one adds
a flourish of rhythm
and the others accommodate
and then back again
and forward and back.

She who is dying
plays with the circle
two against three—a trick of timing.
As energy rises
she smiles as she toys playful.
In another month
still alive, still dying
they will meet
to drum again.

Ellen Porter
1/27/08
Bear

One alpine morning
I took pad and pen
and picked each stepfall
to the top of the ridge.

It was cold still,
my breath adding to the early fog.
I sat, my back resting against
an eon of granite
and waited for poetic phrases to come.

A thrashing in the scrub
several yards away,
pushing and prodding toward me.
And all I had to defend myself
from bear,
was an old green ballpoint pen
and a tablet.

I not so much decided to
remain seated
as that a paralysis of fear overtook me.
I waited; it thrashed
and came bursting into view:
huge, black, a red tongue lolling
from it’s mouth.
And then it peed in terror—
the neighbor’s large, unruly mutt.
I threw my arms around his neck
and we licked each other in giggles of delight.
Poetic words did not come that day.

Ellen Porter
3/01/08
Forgotten Lunch

When I see sycamore and pine
laced tight by windless snow
I stop to watch
white upon white
forgetting lunchtime
for memories of
earlier, destructive storms.

Smoked salmon and creamed cheese
can wait until I have my fill
of winter-heavy trees
circling the meadow
basking in the icy sun.

Ellen Porter
2/27/08
In Search of Mulberries

Searching for mulberries
I come too late in the season
but my stomach and soul
are hungry.

I munch on the bitter
needles of pine
and my feet grow
solid in the ground.

How can it be that
the Beloved sends me on
a seasonless journey?

Condescending,
Hafiz answers:
to teach you to laugh
my friend
to teach you to laugh
until the mulberry
bears fruit.

Ellen Porter
1/31/08
Of Old It Has Come To Me

It has come to me
only in honest wilderness:
the golden world.

In rocks, glistening
in thunder after rain,
in lightning not spent.

It has come down
in perfect rolling breakers
water clear enough
to magnify seals

to watch kelp,
dangling upward
from the ocean floor.

But it no longer comes,
the golden world:
perhaps the realm of adolescence.

And my heart aches
with its absence.
Oh, my heart aches.

Ellen Porter
1/26/08
snow presses deep

across the grass.
no sound
no motion
just deep resting white.

i wonder about the dirt
and all that springs from it:
does it breathe easily through its comforter
or is it intimidated by the dark;
does grass rattle beneath the cold;
do bulbs of wildflowers quiver?

i prefer to think they lie in peaceful sleep
no urge for thrusting into light;
no itching to show their colors.

if god is god
this pasture will soon enough be greening.

Ellen Porter
1/25/08
The Illusion and the Verse

I was so distracted
that I missed seeing
the full moon
rising orange and round
like a fine gourd at sunset.

My mind was on poetry,
how to come upon it unaware
and tack it to the page.
But instead it came to me
unaware and I lost both
the illusion and the verse.

2008-04-21T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/12/07
Constancy

Tomorrow I will run to Your heart
for courage and a glimmer of Your will.
Today
I will float chrysanthemums in a bowl
and will gaze silently on your beauty.
Today, tomorrow
You are my Beloved.
Do not stay far off in the desert.

Ellen Porter
12/16/07
Gratitude

Each separate spirit
weaves its own gift,
sets it free into the world
to settle fine as dandelion lace
on trees and birds, raccoons and human hearts.

Each separate gift
spins love into creation
and love upon love
the world gives back its gratitude.

Ellen Porter
10/15/07
kin

your mother gave you promises
life hard and cold as brick
but still yours to take along
promises making you
the root and seed of
your imagination.

my mother offered old poems
sweet and sticky,
honey dappled on the
bitter side of leaves.
she gave me nothing
as sibyl,
so i mark my own path
scattering anger
like bread crumbs.

Ellen Porter
11/02/07
Owl Wings

Darkest of mornings
chill whisper of autumn
I waken with the
aching call of pain.

I long for owl wings
for the antics of ouzel
played out in falling water.
I yearn for unprotected light,
my skin burning below shorts
above a tattered tee
lending an aura of strength
to my mountain-eager body.

I trace the power of these things
allowing the scent of pine,
the wizening of storm-destroyed boles,
the eternal passage of trout,
allowing them to hand me over
from pain, to beauty, to
a huge hungering for freedom.

Ellen Porter
11/19/07
Thanksgiving

I am grateful
and spin a comforter of memories:
my life, a quiet canoe
floating in steadfast water.

Morning coffee softened with milk,
the first blue-blackened sky of autumn dawn
bursting into sunrise.

Five friends, shaping a community of love,
willing to loose the strings of selfishness
to feed the family or to wash the plate.

The garden, sunken, secret, below a hedge of pines,
the ancient maple, home to squirrels, birds, a raccoon
the sweetly staining mulberries pressed
in handfuls to purple lips.

I am grateful
for myriad pleasures,
every moment memorizing its gift.

Ellen Porter
11/21/07
The Wicked Trick

Three nights consecutive I waken.
My Beloved has allowed this malicious pain.
And yet I hold to Her,
my Mother,
the One who understands
the spirals of the dark.

If She blesses this wicked trick
of blistering, binding, malignant ache
then I bow to touch my forehead
to the floor and, not praising Her,
merely seeking to understand,
I whisper, “but You love me.
What is this awful gift
given by your benevolent hand?”

Ellen Porter
1/1/08
Traveling (for Joan Chittister)

You are leaving again,
your luggage always packed
ready for departure.
This time ten days in India
and a month in Cayman to write.

Globally known, you are.
People quiver at the chance to
look you in the eye, to touch your hand,
to hear you speak and
receive your blessing.

I know you sitting on the
rocking chair, chatting about death:
mine,
or lingering around the supper table,
outwitting the other guests with
thrice-told tales of near tragedy,
always ending in a
puff of laughter
blown across table settings at you,
like those trying to extinguish candles
on a birthday cake.

You are voted most influential woman today.
I sigh, regret another accolade,
and hand you a half-eaten bag of trail mix
for your long, barely nourishing
ocean flight to Asia.

2008-04-17T00:10:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/15/97
Coming Home

We trekked the mud flats
tidal low, remembering
the crushing waves
an hour past.

It was the terminus
of vacation
the boy and I running free
across the ocean’s narrow face.

We ran from starfish and anemone
from the lightning phosphorescence of plankton
the gills of fish.
We ran toward town.

Our duffels and treasures packed
we joined the unnecessary elders
and rode homeward.

I waited to tell stories to
my eager mother, my siblings
while the boy
closed his eyes, his mouth
with no one to listen
but me.

Ellen Porter
9/20/07
God is Out of Touch
after Hafiz)

Lying in the hammock
I am exhausted.
My heart
a rusted out watering can.

The Beloved is on vacation.
When will She bring back
Her ridiculous smile?

Ellen Porter
12/04/07
Kim, Trying to Visit

She waited in the airport
seven hours stolen out of
the tapestry of her day.

No black ponds to reflect
her fading reflection
back to her for safe-keeping.

No blue forget-me-nots
or golden columbine
to keep her soul attached
to her body abandoned
to cold, hard chairs
and calculated time.

She lingered with tears
for seven, nine, ten
squandered hours
and then ceded the game
and fell back in weighted sleep
on foreign, smoky pillows
of hotel reprise.

I wonder if she will ever fly
the skyways again
or if this abandonment of self
is too expensive to risk
the devastating loss of
image and the slow curling dance
of time toward death.

Ellen Porter
11/28/07
Out of Respect

If I were like another poet
I wouldn’t mind pulling on
rainproof boots, Christmas-old mittens
and beleaguering coat.
I wouldn’t mind gripping the door handle
and pushing through the icy shock
of that first bit of bitter air.

If I were like another poet
I’d go ‘round the paths
naming…that is what she does…
names the birds and trees and sticky weeds
making them her own.
And from that owning
her poems creep forth.

But, it becomes obvious,
I am not like that other poet.
My words, the trickle of my imagination,
come from belly deep, warming from the inside out.
I may never be that other poet
to whom children and poets bow obeisance,
but my words will be true,
erupting from my word-pregnant belly,
they will be true.

Ellen Porter
10/08/07
taking leave

on ordinary mornings i watch tranquil
dark ebbing toward translucent dawn

i read the poets
the great ones
fashioning words and styles and lines
for imitation’s sake
my mind quiet and long.

but today she is taking leave
my sister
and thoughts dart through the dark
like blackbirds
i will not see her soon again
my spirit churning, awaiting
her imminent departure
no time yet for the inevitable dawn

Ellen Porter
11/30/07
The Time is Coming

The time is coming
when I will no longer
seek rest and meals with assorted
strangers and well-meaning friends.

Conversations may turn to angry tirade
or tiresome accolade
and meanwhile I am dying.

Solitude is a far better trek,
the spoor of fatigue avoided.

A roomful of people
and though each one born will die
no one here has yet
and perhaps I am closest to that ascent.

Still it is best to suffer it in shadow,
testing the direction like wind off a sail.

Ellen Porter
9/19/07
You Think I am in Love
(after Hafiz)

You think I am in love
with one person
but the Beloved laughs.
She holds me by my ankles
turns me upside down and
S
H
A
K
E
S
There is enough love here
for the whole world!

2008-04-14T00:10:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/06/07
come to visit the dying

you came to visit me
dying
and together we urged
our memories down, back
ten years to our last meeting.
i crept along behind you
my body disintegrating,
a steamed artichoke
loosening its layers of green,
each leaf barbed against new intimacy.

Ellen Porter
10/09/07
Gleaning Frenzy

She is driving a U-Haul truck
pulling a trailer across
a continent called home,
and her heart is full of the journey
too full to reap pure and
satisfying solitude.

She is not seeking the Beloved;
she is flying head-long
toward the child of her child,
a moth tinkering with flame
no room for the void
where Love has soil to bloom.

Hafiz perches beside her
in the truck
playing with her desperate cat.

He knows if he should
leave her abandoned
she would glean frenzy
like wasps.

So I bless his absence
pray for a smooth and sudden swell,
one rapid wave licking the sandy shoal
at journey’s end,
and I thirst for his imminent return.

Ellen Porter
11/26/07
It Remains True

It remains true
that all things die:
the webbed spider
wraps its gasping housefly
in steel-strong threads;
the bear rustles up mushrooms;
and the great blue
heron or whale
spears its silvery salmon.
And yes, it remains true
that all things die.

But I would like to
eke out more time to
further prove that theory.
I would wander on
watching the eternal fall
of one creature, one potato, one forget-me-not.

And I would wander on
looking to meet a stranger friend,
not embracing death
but for a moment
flinging and dancing
free and breezy
these fortunate, uninterrupted lives.

Ellen Porter
9/11/07
One Hundred Children

One hundred poems
inked by children
school children who
write at their desks
write leaning against a tree in the sun
write flopping kitty-cornered on their beds.
Children too young to know
the pain that stains their paper.
Poems screaming out loneliness and abuse.

May they grow older
their fingers holding pens,
their longings and hopes flowering on paper.
May their loneliness and pain
turn to benign memory
as they catch them
flying by their grieving hearts.
May more poems—
poem after poem—
convert these anguished children into
strong and peaceful elders.

Ellen Porter
11/03/07
Spirit Days

Halloween, All Saints, and All Souls
beg us along to follow
the ancient spirits.
We try to tame them by
giving them names
but they are so many
and we so few.

Halloween we give up to the children.
During the day, from the
muffled schoolrooms,
they prance and hold out their bags,
delighted by their power over sweetness.
And at dusk,
walking tree to tree
they are taken up by their own ferocity.
Still, their mouths are filled with candy,
their spirits are tamed.

But those other great feasts of saints and souls
are in adult terrain.
We quickly remember our own favorite dead
and light candles.
But there are so many others,
unnamed, running ahead
turning now and then to
grin at the scrambling dark.

Ellen Porter
12/01/07
The Ten Thousand Things

My mind cannot grasp
the ten thousand things
hurtling in the chaos
crying “it is so” and
“it is not so.”

I tip sideways with
the conflict of the message
and my heart falters.

My Beloved curls sleeping
in my arms;
I struggle restlessly
against my Friend’s
wind-roughened cheek.

My Love in me;
I in my Love.
Just two of the
ten thousand things.

Ellen Porter
12/05/07
Writer’s Block

At dusk
my heart shriveled
remembering the dawn yet to come.

In the early hours
when I pick up pen and precious paper
I fear I will have no words to share
my stomach turning every which way
the dread of something ruined.

2008-04-10T00:10:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
10/8/07
Caryn Departing
(after Hafiz)

Hafiz laughs.
He fingers the dark beads
of dew in his hair,
shakes his head,
spraying water like a dog
fresh from a puddle.

I watch from a distance
Caryn making ready to depart;
there is nothing I can do.
It is not a time for weeping.

Caryn and Hafiz
laughing quietly behind their hands:
they are in this together
remaining and taking leave.

Hafiz will not leave me alone.

Ellen Porter
9/22/07
For the Love of God
(after Hafiz)

The cat
eyes the company.
It doesn’t like parties.

But the Beloved
has sent it on an errand
to bring Her absolute, foolproof love
to all Her friends.

The cat
wanders the room
meanders the garden
and hisses boldly at
all it sees
save one.

That one is not a cat lover,
so it wraps its supple body
around her legs, leaving
brown and white and golden hairs.

Later,
the Beloved asks the cat
about its poor behavior
and the cat replies,

I certainly don’t know
how you pick
your
friends!

Ellen Porter
11/13/07
Into the Desert

I flee into the desert
the tip of Your shadow
my only guide.

Beloved, You are water to my thirst
bread to my hunger.
You are succor to my fear.
I need nothing else
but a glimpse of Your
scattering love.

Ellen Porter
12/02/07
On the Street

It is too bitter to lie
sun-warmed in the hammock.

Memory bids July come
but these aching muscles
this trembling skin
name December the culprit.

I take a blanket
and walk the streets
looking for I do not know what.

The street walkers
saunter to the corner, cold,
their hair splayed like a worried cat’s.

I walk the sidewalks
wrapped against winter.
They walk in a pack,
threatened by the tight fists
of the one who buys them pain.

All of us searching for I do not know what.
They do not allow for it,
but we are all sisters.

Ellen Porter
11/14/07
Some Dull Hope

The tumors,
two or more, not one
clutter my lung space
eat ferociously
the lingering air.

The doctor took
the pictures and the facts
and tried and tried
to help me understand
there is no hope
through radiating
away the alien flesh.

There are no other options left.
He slinks away from
pronouncing me hopeless
and so advises me to
humidify my room until
the window gleams wet,
sister to the sea.
Perhaps it will help my breathing.

He turns to leave,
smiling,
satisfied he has handed
me something: antidote to illness,
some dull hope.

Ellen Porter
9/15/07
The Studio

After three weeks of
dusty, heartbreaking toil
they are finished gleaning the potter’s studio.
The potter is dead.

There are glazed porcelain pots,
museum ready, left untouched
by dying hands.
There are boxes of papers, descriptions
of beauty, of glazes, of kiln mysteries.
The papers caught irreparably,
torn to confetti shreds,
the secrets lost to future generations.
There are tables and the kiln,
the petrified clay, tucked away and forgotten.
And, amid the art,
there are wok and toaster oven,
wine glasses and knives,
cases of wine and a collection of cork screws.
All is cleared out and offered
as open-handed
gifts of remembrance.

The potter’s ashes,
in an urn made for himself
by his own hand,
is carried, serendipitous to the lakeshore,
the pot to be buried with
broken shards of shattered failures,
in his final loam-rich dreaming place.

After three weeks of dusty toil
the friends are leaving,
their work completed.
I watch through the elevator window as
waist and torso and head disappear.
They have been calm blessing to our house,
blessing through death.
But they will come again and
together, we will gather round
a delectable meal
and laugh.

Ellen Porter
11/16/07
woman of color

you sat at a table
and we gathered round
sitting, our knees bumping
one another’s,
our smiles
calculated for comfort.

you sat at the table
in your elegant brown skin
and we envied ourselves
your presence.

the subject turned to poetry.
someone asked me who I read.
lucille clifton i offered as gift
and mary oliver, in balance.
The elegant woman said humpf
in surprise.
i did not dare to meet
the challenge of ownership
in her eyes.

2008-04-07T06:10:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/08/07
Cancer

I wander down sandy lanes
footsteps shuffling deeply
pulled closer and closer
to the sea bright air
in breaths half taken
lungs left hungering for more.

I do not know in what ways I differ
from you and from the
multitude of souls I befriend
but different I am:
in the length of my stride
the tilt of my smile
the swollen bulk of this
body I no longer know.

I take care along the sandy lane
that my feet reach forward
toward the green-waved sea
where silver fish
pull their breaths,
their gills wavering
through the salt-tongued depths.
I am drawn on
a creature of age old migration.

Ellen Porter
10/26/07
Prose Poem

For Blocking the Doors

The courageous six stand on the courthouse steps, pride and unity enlarging their hearts. Civil disobedience shouts war is not the answer.

They arrive to sit at trial and we to listen, up concrete corridors to the room with wooden pews and straight-faced men standing guard. Six hearts, still brave but shrinking softly under practiced intimidation.

The magistrate judge opens the door, enters the room as if it were her own: a gray haired woman with sympathetic hands, loving patience, unfeigned interest in these six succinct minds and yearning spirits.

We hear evidence that does not apply. But the pain, the transparent pain of the six, rises, holding the courtroom captive.

They are guilty. Even we, their orderly and eager support, even we know they are guilty but naïve and moral and impelled toward non-violent action.

They are guilty, and with tears edging down her cheeks, the magistrate judge hands out with loving truth a sentence minimal enough to bear and firm enough to bolster the necessary pride of the incarcerated six.

Ellen Porter
10/1007
Integration

is not a matter of deserving.
My father loathed Negroes
and some while before,
the grandfathers and great-grandfathers
locked their shackles around
bruised and bleeding ankles

So not a matter of deserving
but a longing to worship
the same God.

And the beautiful
black face of tribal wisdom
turns her head
dismisses me.

For centuries forgiveness must
flow one way.
There is so much to be repented.
My white body quivers,
yearning for common ground.

Is there no place for seeing
the wide and gracious wombs
in acceptance of each other’s
history and hues?

Ellen Porter
11/23/07
Of All the Obsessions

Of all the obsessions
in this sorry heart of mine
racism is hardest to define
and miserable.

Hafiz laughs at me and demands
What makes you think the Beloved is
white and comfortingly like yourself?

Maybe, in the first place
She beheld the black satin skin
of Her own reflection and said,
This is great!

You are so afraid of detecting
rejection in your own soul
that you resist walking up to
a beautiful black man,
an elegant bronze woman,
and shaking hands, and that you
resist talking like one person to another,
and that you refuse to let your feet dance
in a multicolored, smiling circle
of drums and rattles.

Your sorry heart
loses out on half the shining love
of the universe.

Ellen Porter
9/27/07
Sleep
(after Hafiz)

You are crazy
my sweet friend.
You rise in early morning—
four o’clock again today!—
and you wonder at your
fatigue.

Ellen,
Listen,
The Beloved craves
your sleep.
It is then that She scatters
poems and dreams
in your hair.

So sleep!
At night is best
but a nap at seven a.m. will do
or rocking gently
in the hammock
anytime.

The Beloved
so wants to come near
that I, Hafiz,
may have to rap you on the head,
unconscious,
so She can give Her gifts,
wholly, delightfully,
to you.

Ellen Porter
11/05/07
The Steps Toward Home

Between the steps toward home
steep enough to warrant a railing
cold and rough on children’s shoes
and the gravel laden parking lot

there is a sidewalk
to be shoveled in winter
wandered in summer
the wanderer unaware.

And beside the walk
a strip of untended garden
weeds mostly,
sticking out their spiked and sticky tongues.

But in spring a clean and infinite garden
snow drops, crocus, daffodil and hyacinth.

Today, with a token nod to November
I feel the sticky weeds
but I cannot envision
the star-laden blooms.

Ellen Porter
9/28/07
Water For Water

She made her decision slowly,
my sister,
sliding smoothly like a snake
losing its familiar skin.
She is leaving Lake Erie,
leaving behind the hard, scaly
protection of long use,
to slip
new and shimmering
along Puget Sound.

The Pacific Northwest
pulls her like a magnet—
evergreens, heron and rain—
the evermore urgent yearning
for a home of her own belongings,
and, dancing the pink joy
of laces and frills—
and growing, oh so fast—
there is the irresistible, irreplaceable
smallest offspring:
the child of her child.

I am the one left behind,
cherished like the final
ripening apricot of summer,
hanging alone,
waiting to fall or to be taken.
There is no sorrow in being last,
only a bright and startling awareness
of leaves and stems and final seeds.

2008-04-03T00:10:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/10/07
By My Window

By my window
I lean across my little desk
to watch the moon
half full
move through autumn-bare
sycamore branches.

I turn to go
my heart pulled by
morning obligations
and, startled,
I see in the mirror
the moon again,
wandering.

Ellen Porter
9/17/07
Feline

Settling in my hammock
I hear a squeaking
like oxygen escaping a valve.

I inhale deeply,
check my tank:
no whistle, no irritating squeal.

Then out from under
my comfortable recline
comes a cat
face black and snow
tail brown as disturbed dirt
in a garden newly planted.

She squeaks and cajoles
and jumps onto the bed
looking for food—I have none
looking for water—mine is in a bottle
looking for willing, scratching fingers.

I bump her gently to the ground.
She is no twin for my soul.

Ellen Porter
10/15/07
Insistence

Early morning
long before sunrise
I am awakened by
the longing call of love.

No friend here
in flesh;
the quiet insistence
has no other source
than the calling
and calling
of the Beloved.

Ellen Porter
11/15/07
Ochalek

Brigid, ten months,
attends vigil after vigil for peace.
Her father holds her high in the air:
her squealing laughter.
Together, they urge: Stop the War.
Under billowing blouse, her mother nurses
and the baby smiles the smile of the innocent.

And what will come of her when she is five?
Will her innocence blossom into wisdom
fresh from her parents’ souls,
or will she nurture her own glee,
the peace that passes understanding?

She waves her protesting fists in the air,
tastes them, nearly a year old.
How fortunate we are to spawn
the next generation:
Brigid and Jessie and Matt,
holding hands against the world’s inundation

Ellen Porter
11/29/07
Silence and Separation

This morning I rise early
like on so many other days.

But today my soul is ready
to turn away.

Silence and separation are
what I crave,
not soulfulness or wisdom,
not union with the Friend.

Just leave me alone to feel
the autumn wind on my coat,
the cold
battering my stubbornness.

Ellen Porter
10/12/07
The Stash of Love

If there is a secret
stash of love in my soul
no one, not even I
knows where it is hidden.

Rumi knows and understands
the mystery.
He knows he cannot find the stash,
he knows it is there for the finding:
the genesis of love
for parent and child and old uncle
all the kin from time’s beginning.
And then all the friends and
finally the enemies.
That last is where the secret lies
too hidden to be found except
in the pomegranate and the water lily,
sunrise and the roaring lion.

Ellen Porter
11/26/07
Wandering This House

Wandering this house
more mansion than hovel
I walk with predicted death.

I hear it calling
room to room
and I follow
eager
leaving fear behind.

At the moment,
the splendid moment
that I encounter its essence

death will bow to me
and I will fall
unshaken
into the embrace
of the infinite
Beloved.

2008-03-31T04:42:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/10/07
Breath and the Moon

It all started when I couldn’t breathe.
When I couldn’t bear to stand still
and watch the moon

shining like a silver coin
outside my window
lofting from branch to branch

through the sycamore tree.
I couldn’t purchase air enough
to fill my lungs

and the doctors came
and the doctors spoke
and frowned their sympathetic

smiles while they told me
tonight would come before tomorrow’s
noon and I would likely see it.

Cancer, they say, cannot be outwitted.
But dangling from their fingers
like a cat’s catnip mouse

they offer one more hope, one more small hope,
and desperate, I grasp at it
in utter fear and trembling shame.

Ellen Porter
9/18/07
Inner City

Three little boys
brown and golden as forgotten waffles
swing together in my hammock
knees and legs entwined
heads knocking lightly together.
They are laughing as I approach
my pillow and water and book, my oxygen
balanced against aching elbows.

Is this your back yard? they ask.
No, I say, but it is my hammock.
Is this a church? They point to the house.
No, I say, it is a house where my friends live.
It looks like a church.
Where do you live?
Next door in the big building.
Could I have my hammock now?
They laugh and tumble out.
You can have the cat if you can
catch her, I shout after them.

The cat comes running to the bush fence
and escapes the six nimble hands.
The boys slow to a walk and
as they leave I hear one whisper

She even has shade here!

Ellen Porter
10/21/07
Nowhere near the union

of perfect love
I hide my face in shame
from the Beloved.

God loves me.
It is the only thing
left to say.

When I argue with
my friend
we sparkle in anger
but we are not ashamed.

Practicing love
practicing, practicing.

One day I will
pull the shameful
veil from my face
and let myself
be seen
by the Beloved.

Ellen Porter
11/0407
She Is There

I have not forgotten
that the Beloved
holds an angry charge.
Some sweet orange blossom days
She reclines in smiles and
sun-dappled silliness.
But I have known Her
to fling the burning sphere
from the heavens
and to roar,
initiating the unsuspecting
with a dangerous wrath.

We dirty the waters of ocean, lake and stream
and She is there.
We clang and tangle noise through city parks
and She is there.
We reap sterility from mine, rain forest, grainy field
and She is there.
And then we fall in tearful remorse for our sins and those of our kin
and She is there.

I tell you beware:
the Beloved is no play thing.
She offers a serendipitous joy
with Her beckoning arm
but with the other hand
She prepares a sound slap
for all the whirling world.

Ellen Porter
10/13/07
The Speaker

She is polishing herself
like granite.
Before the audience,
she is polishing herself.

Her hand brushes up against her eyes
pushes back her hair
fisting like an uphill stream.
She hides her face from us,
polishing.

Her words glisten.
She mirrors intensity, forgiveness from her sheen
and bitterness:
love of turtles and muskrat
otters, red-winged blackbirds
and fish
swimming the mother water,
polluted.

She shines clean
a river, surface slow,
and undertow of flame.
She burns redemption as she comes.
Thrusting my hand toward her eager soul
I do not wish it for myself—
I am nearly spent—
but plunder for the body politic,
the children
for the sprouting children.

Ellen Porter
12/08/07
Valerie

Today she celebrates
The beginning of her life on earth.

For the larger part, there has been joy:
sled rides on her first snow,
I held her close between my legs and
we squealed together, passing pines and
stones and squirrels.

At eleven, a backpack trip—
her first week
away from home, snuggled up against
this adoring aunt, naming the
“miss your mommy day,” and singing
“She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes”
in thunder, echoing off granite craters.

And much later, her wedding day.
the rings missing, she announced it loudly and firmly.
And when they were found
she sobbed against her lover’s chest.
I knew she had passed from exuberant child
To able adult.

And together the two set out on a journey:
the fifty states, surfing, rock climbing, camping again.

Then one day she called with new life in her belly
and we all cried with the joy of anticipation.

Now a mother—a wise and careful mother,
raising a child named Grace.
And with Mark, she continues to grow and to create,
to deal with crises, and to find joy
in this life on earth—the only life she owns.

Many more years to be celebrated,
and in my presence or in my absence
I love you Val, and I will forever.

2008-03-27T06:05:00.001-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/27/07
Begonia

True friendship is not
based on fidelity of heart.
The garden blooms, not
because the gardener stands
in open-mouthed awe
but because someone has
taken the muddy hose
and left water in its wake.

So, too, our friendship.

Last evening my begonia
sagged, its leaves soft
and wilted as week-old lettuce.
I was too tired to tend it.
In the night, you offered it water
and this morning its leaves are
crisp, straining toward light.
That, my dear one,
is
utter friendship!

Ellen Porter
10/18/07
expedition to covington

we pack loosely and leave the priory.
we aim the headlamps south;
the road to home narrows behind us.
we are going visiting
like old aunts
to a familiar motherhouse.

the sisters will receive us
as kin (and some of them are)
and we will settle
our rooms, our underwear, our souls.

four days for secret thoughts
the familiarity of matins and vespers
laced with whispering, keeping
tradition, a skeleton
bracing up our windward spirits.

gratitude for daily office and novels
for baseball scores and beer
for wandering the zoo.

But we cannot roam too far.
A few days and we will
pack loosely and travel the widening road home
to matins and vespers
and whispering.

Ellen Porter
10/17/07
inner city fatigue

to trade pot holes
and concrete
for the heron
flying
legs a jet trail
behind the splendid form
of tufted head and
sleek, knowing feathers

do not tell of this
secret trade
i hold it close
behind my eyes
and fear that
with the telling
the bird, the pregnant sky
will vanish
in the knowing.

Ellen Porter
11/07/07
November Snow

No more cobs of corn
the season quietly unfolds;
yesterday wind and snow
decorated the dying sky.

Ellen Porter
9/26/07
September 26

Past the autumnal equinox
my blood pounds through my veins
toward winter.

My sweet summer memories lag
as early morning pulls its chill
up around my crackling window,
the cold barely kept at bay by
lintel and latch.

I close my eyes,
blind to the cold
and remember days ago
running out the door
barefoot,
delighting in the summer softness
of warm air against my skin.

I remember the lime green leaves
of early spring,
the wildflowers,
and the clover grass crouching,
waiting to be mown.

I will be different in autumn
and utterly different in winter.
I will lose my subtle memory
of gentler seasons.

I will blow cold steam
from my fingers
and, hunkered down against
perpetual gray,
I will reach out in vain remembrance
trying to touch the magnificent
petals of spring.

Ellen Porter
10/07/07
The Soul Withers

I have known the ecstasy of love
my life a tapestry
rich as silk, strong woven.

I have lost my heart’s center
longing for the beloved—
rarely mine but always beckoning.

O, I have loved loving
there is no regret,
but never have I lost
one precious;
death has never stolen away
the anchor of my soul.

And so my life is half full.

Without the devastation of grief
the soul withers in delight.

Ellen Porter
10/2/07
Two Days Tired
(after Hafiz)

I am two days tired
and Hafiz lies in bed
counting his toes
and waiting.

I have lost the
gentle stroke of the Beloved’s hand.
She has turned Her
huge and love-soft body away.
I pout and send Her
accusing glances.

Hafiz calls to me;
he is still reclining, unconcerned.

Listen!
The backside of God
is far better than
your bitter arrogance.
So go vomit, clean your lips
and
falling on your knees
kiss her tender thigh.

Then the three of us
will whirl like dervishes.

2008-03-24T09:12:00.000-04:00

Ellen Porter
12/15/07
Bar Fly

Hafiz is long gone
I must pick up his book again
to hear of his raucous brawls
and sarcastic taunts.

Oh Beloved
never known till now
and now so early lost.

Oh Beloved
greatest lover of us all
warm and welcoming
soft and mellowing belly.

I yearn for your mother laugh
my deep desire to crackle grey terrain
into windblown greening.

Hafiz
I will pull your book
once again from the shelf
if you promise to lead me tavern close
to our miraculous Friend.

Ellen Porter
12/18/07
Every Greening Tree

Every creature
every greening tree
every painted, gaudy bloom

and so, perhaps,
each chunk of gray and star-strewn granite
each and every one must die.

Days of nonchalance pass by
when I think of death lightly
disease given respite from suffering.

And there are spans of time
pulled tightly into darkness
when I dream of final breath
and darkening hole.

I tremble twice
in gratitude and grief
and some days they co-mingle
leaving me wondering
and weeping
beside the final door.

Ellen Porter
12/10/07
Imagination in Winter

Another December day.
Used snow a dirty scarf
of white and brown
some eight days fallen.

I, biding time till summer,
have not opened the weary screen
kicked in by children,
have not ventured out
into soul-searing cold.

No rivers or pines
no blackbirds, skunks or city cats
within these self imposed confines.
But the imagination is bright
and ink flows evenly from this pen:
a blissful opportunity to carry
a bundle of winter
through these feral halls.

Ellen Porter
10/1/07
Not Two, But One

The two can draw each other
like the sun holds earth in its gravity.
Or the two can lose their grip
and repel each other:
mercury at the repellent end of a magnet.
Either way fatigue eventually subdues
the vital energies.

So drop the focus of two.
Wander off after the Beloved.
Play Her intricate games, refresh your weariness,
gambol in Her delight

And bind yourself to Her
with cords stronger than
the push and pull of two.
Fling your energy away to God
in exchange for
Her lively, exuberant, endless
Passion.

Ellen Porter
12/05/07
Saying Good-Bye

My week unfolds with
the visit of a friend.

After ten years we see into
each others’ eyes
older, with the familiarity
of a dream lost at dawn
touching a vague image
but unable to resurrect the story whole.

I would rather be alone
but, in this final stage of illness
I let them in to say good-bye—
these friends of another era.

Soon I will no longer care
whether or not we say “so long.”
I will refuse each visitor
face by worried face.

I will curl up in my chair,
or lie practicing, on my bed
the still position of death.

Ellen Porter
11/21/07
The Sick Room

My sick room
cluttered by machines and
cotton balls, syringes, alcohol swabs,

there is the oxygen condenser
humidifier, nebulizer.
But across the room

in its comfortable corner
uncluttered, my blue quilt
waits the cool of evening

beckoning, its billows soft,
beckoning, the tenderness of colors,
ever pulling me, insistent, toward a final, uncluttered sleep.

Ellen Porter
10/30/07
Twice Blessed

Twice blessed
the cottonwoods golden
and the sun

shimmering across the
cloud stained morning.

It is so much finer
to look

to look and see the leaves,
the goldfinch, the spot of air
left by the wind.

So much finer than cottages
or chimneys or garden gates.

Though, speaking truly
these, too, add much pleasure
to my soul.

2008-03-20T06:10:00.003-04:00

Ellen Porter
10/23/07
Autumn Once Again

Autumn once again
morning hiding the color of leaves
in weathered darkness.

I have seen the golds and reds
in passing
a daylight’s gift
catching breath where awe is found.

It isn’t that I don’t love color
but that this brilliant display
foretells winter white.

I would just as well
stay with green
stop the procession of the seasons
and roll eternally in summer’s grass

Ellen Porter
11/02/07
Erie Sky

At dawn the clouds
bloomed carnation red
tearing the sky into
ribbons of flame.

No sailors to warn.

Ellen Porter
11/16/07
I Dream of Safe Haven

I wander in the mountains
my eyes blessed with
columbine, shooting stars
and glaciers. Bowls carved
by ice, granite smooth.
I am without companion
and my heart beats like
the woodpecker’s
knocking; my breath comes,
fashioning my nose and throat
for high windy struggle.

My spirit is ready to make
these mountains home.
Here I do not search for God:
the Beloved is with me.
How I long for Her even as She
walks by my side.
My Friend and I,
(I am fully consumed),
trek these mountains
bride and bride
laughing in the alpine sheen
of unbegotten light.

Ellen Porter
11/14/07
No Moon

Out my closed window
no moon.
Dying draws near
and without my Beloved
around my shoulders
I tremble.

I do not ask to
keep death waiting,
I merely beg
my gracious Friend
to stay with me
to stray with me on the mountain
these moonless nights.

Ellen Porter
12/09/07
Sacred Days

Eight sacred days
I have not jangled the outside door.

I watch the school children
donning their snow suits

bouncing with exuberance
slinking up and down the stairs.

I remember that winter exhilaration
starting with fingers turned blue

ending with tears of defrosting pain
and then hot chocolate.

Fifty years in flight
barely recognizing the

metamorphosis of one season to the next.
The struggle of school work, or professional prestige,

even the rapid scattering of play.
And now, confined by disease

I can only watch and remember.
Memories stored within my

trembling muscles.
Winter inside and out.

Ellen Porter
12/04/07
The Possibility of Prostitution

Early morning hours
keep magic of words
hovering from my pen
onto precious blue-lined paper.

I must be careful,
soulfully careful,
not to tarnish that time
with hopes of published glory.

Not by a person
promising success;
she will become owner of my
silent time.
Not by packets of poems
given as gift to friends.
Not by slips, rejecting
my verse for ink, printed
in elite journals.

I must withdraw my attention
from the sweetness of the world.
Four o’clock comes early
and must own my soul
for safe-keeping.

Ellen Porter
12/12/07
Twenty Years and Love is Left

Twenty years I’ve lived with cancer
I’ve lived, sometimes forgetting,
sometimes fighting it with all I’m worth—
which isn’t much at times.

And now, this year, the battle subsides
I relax into dying.

Love is left:
for the four I live with,
for my struggling community.

Love is left
for the day care children
for the electrician speaking pain,
searching for prayers.

Love is left
painfully
for my dearest friend.

And with the elders
who have one foot passed already to the
brilliant, great unknown
I wonder what will happen next
what will happen when I plant
both feet and my soul across to heaven.

And so each day, morning and evening
I pray for Margaret and Joanne
the eldest of our old ones.
I do not worry for them,
I tag along where they lead.
And love is all.

2008-03-17T00:59:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
11/07/07
As I Wait For the Beloved

As I wait for the Beloved
sitting in tepid autumn’s sun
my back leaning
leaning against the maple tree
my mind is calm
my soul content to wait
for the inevitable one.

Ellen Porter
11/18/07
Elements

In earth I am ready
to trade daffodils
for blackened soil,
a new and permanent cradle.

Water finds me waiting,
lapping in cupped hands
from the arid lakeward stream.
The rain holds its breath; draught threatens.

Wind takes air for a jubilant ride
bypassing my troubled breath.
Spinning, twirling, gliding on sunlight,
it no longer requires my respiration.

Fire, lightning borne,
draws ragged maps against the greening sky.
My forehead, torso shimmer with heat
and soon my body, my spirit cast off,
will burn clean away to bones and ashes

Ellen Porter
10/27/07
I Drag Cancer Along

I drag cancer along
like a hermit crab
greedy for
a larger shell.
I sometimes lurch
sideways
not sure of my footing
on tide pool edges.

When I stand
my breath deserts me
and I panic like a child
who loses sight of home.
When I kneel down
to catch a bit of litter
off the floor
my legs can find no pull
to bring me back
to steady ground.
And so I flounder.

The crab can disappear
for hours hidden, invulnerable
inside its whorled shell.
But I must remain seen,
my shell emotion deep.

The softness of this body,
the swollen face,
mothwing fragile skin
and the fatigue, the fatigue
sketch evidence of this
grotesque, unbidden malady.
I would like to scuttle home.

Ellen Porter
12/07/07
My Guest

The first
snow of the year,
branches showing white shoulders
and benches deserted till spring, wet and weeping cold.

I stay indoors
swaddled in dry, soft clothes
a shirt to ward off the cold breeze
sneaking through cracks of window panes.

My guest, new from the Pacific,
pulls on layers of warmth
and goes dancing
into the December chill.

She returns exhilarated an hour later,
sliding to the boot room door
like a child on new skis,
smiling, her nose bright red.

She has come to see me dying
but reappears full of autumn joy,
hardly able to sustain her grief,
handed over by the Beloved to
the exuberance of nature gone wild.

Ellen Porter
10/16/07
Rumi says, “Be kind and honest,
and harmful poisons will turn sweet inside you.”

My heart flails in anger
at the one whom I
have never befriended.

Before I snip away
his balls
he asks for a jug of water.

I stare at his
impervious eyes,
fetch the water
and fall in homage
at his gracious feet.

Ellen Porter
12/16/07
The Poem, Lost or Stolen

You approach me in chapel.
Your reading, you say,
is either lost or stolen.
My poem.

You look beautiful in
your tunic, nighttime blue,
and in your panic.
I wait in Advent darkness
to see what will happen.

You approach another and
she rumbles through her papers,
me watching, you waiting in anxiety.
The poem appears.

Your face calms;
your voice drops an octave.
You read like a nightingale.

Ellen Porter
11/17/07
Turning South

The golden brown leaves:
a pleated skirt around
the trunk of the sycamore.

Birds still call these branches home
but winter billows close behind
and the blackbirds, south,
will discover warmer ground.

I lie in the leaves
and feel that southward pull.
For a moment I can feel
the fluff and flitter of my
own downy wings.

2008-03-13T00:03:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
9/29/07
An Inclination Toward God

If you have ever stood,
sandaled feet poised to follow
your first inclination toward God,

you may have stumbled
in the waiting
jolted against hard earth
and time-thickened air.

And if you have not given up
but resumed your eager pose
you may have been blessed

by the stately line of wild turkeys
crossing a wayward path
and the brilliant, joyful
field of grassy dandelions.

Ellen Porter
10/14/07
dry spell

time trying to
break my words
trying to wrest
syllables
from the waiting page
no refuge here
no turning
back around
the words
are gone
only the commas
and question marks
remain

Ellen Porter
9/24/07
I am Like a Kite
(after Hafiz)

I am like a kite
in the hands of God.

She runs with me
holding the string
and blowing
Her sweet breath
into my body
like bellows to a fire.

I soar in the
dappled sky blue
laughing my utter delight

and wonder
what will become of me
if the Beloved
gets tired and
runs out of breath.

Ellen Porter
10/21/07
My Parents, Away

Two hundred years old
that California oak
or so they say.

Two trunks lifting
from the hillside ivy
light brown trunks
like coffee too thickly stirred.

Two trunks, lifting and rising
and only one bent enough to climb.

My grandmother came to stay
while my parents traveled in the dark.
She saw me one morning
lying on the lower branches of the
wild and comforting oak.

She didn’t let me climb again
and though I loved her
I yearned and my heart yearned
for my parents’ return
up through the light,
home.

Ellen Porter
9/30/07
Royal Fireworks

Handel,
not the Messiah
but Royal Fireworks
usher in the autumn air.

Summer has slipped out
the back door
forgetting to take all its heat with it,
and so my fan still spins,
an electric beater, mixing
summer and autumn warmth
until thoroughly blended.

I hum along with Handel
and, too familiar, I consider
rousting him out
with Vivaldi in his stead.
But I look out the window
see the tips of cottonwood and sycamore
burning with autumn promise
and decide,
familiar as the changing seasons
these three hundred years,
only Handel
or perfect silence
will suffice.

Ellen Porter
11/25/07
The Next Generation

The old peacers gather at the site
to hold banners, raise signs
sing harmonies to peace.
But where are the young ones;
have their spirits failed?

What has happened to the children?
Who will raise their voices for
nonviolence, peace, the ragged art of diplomacy
to follow in our waning paths?

Are we alone in the middle?
Too young to forget
and too old to close our eyes against oblivion?
If we are alone
let us go out with explosions
of undying, irretrievable light.

Ellen Porter
7/22/07
Tree Surgeon

After the lightning storm
the sentinel pine
stands proud but fractured.

Today, the tree surgeon
gazes up through
tangled, wayward branches
to the lightning-black, pine-yellow trunk
and he groans a little to himself.
He does not speak to me.

He puts on climbing gear
and mounts the tree
like a granite wall,
rises from the ground
a spider scurrying up its silken thread.

And then he is there
touching, eyeing, pruning
that great wound.

Later, he tells me
of the needed sculpture,
several feet from the crown.
The rest will likely survive.
And then he says no more.

As he leaves,
he glances back
with longing
to lend assurance to the pine.

Perhaps it is his love of climbing
that prevails,
and his fondness for
the silent trees.

2008-03-10T06:17:00.002-04:00

Ellen Porter
9/21/07
Almost the End

Almost the end of September
and the air is warm and soft
as a baby’s new skin.

I leave the hammock up
swinging in its prodigious garden
daring the weather to last,
to forego Autumn’s chill.

I climb in and it is
mid-summer again.
I read half a chapter
and then flirt with sleep.

Life is like this.
It seems warmer than it really is,
a sauna on a chilly evening,
the sun broken free of clouds
and the fickle shade of maples.
It plays at being tough
and then offers up a modicum of sleep.

I would be willing to stay forever
in these last September days,
learning their gentle lessons
again and again.

Ellen Porter
12/16/07
Driving To the Monastery

A year
maybe two
we have chosen this empty road
looking for deer.

The car, embarrassed by failure,
still slows a bit to stare
at shoulder high reeds
a tangled fence fashioned
to keep the does imprisoned
to keep the hunters out.

I suddenly see a movement:
a calf-colored brace of ears,
and cry pointing, a deer!
We press our faces to the windows
hardly breathing against
excitement and foggy glass.

In one miraculous leap
the deer denies its prison hold.
With a rustle like wings
it rises and disappears
into another welcoming
twilight field.

Ellen Porter
9/23/07
How Can One Be Lonely
(after Hafiz)

How can one be lonely
when the Beloved is so near?
Ellen,
Take Her name, Beloved,
on your lips and sing.
Sing of your tender
heart-breaking
loneliness
and She may draw nearer
humming a sweet harmony
to your painful, weeping
song.

Ellen Porter
12/17/07
My First Mentor

Twenty, thirty years ago
when we first met
we met with eyes
then warm and lively hands
and then our hearts
the confluence of two rivers
mingled through endless time.

You dispensed your wisdom
gleaned as mother of seven sons
and I gathered it ripe,
like golden apricots,
in increments I could bear.

Oh, I loved you.
But then, dragging behind me
a sin too heavy to share, I turned away.

Years later I heard you were visited by cancer
and you would not survive.
I came to your home once more
to beg my apologies
and to receive your grace.

Now you are gone from tender touch,
but I feel you guiding me, still
laughing, chuckling, weeping
from beyond this dusty earth
before creation, after death,
this eternity.

Ellen Porter
10/06/07
Roswell Cancer Institute

your walls
decorations in color and form
prove a desperate and welcoming blur

I walk your corridors
find your doors
and with each step
realize my illness
more and more

in your gardens
I walk
in autumn, enlivened
I walk
vivid colors of fall
the prototype
of pictures
echoing off your walls

Ellen Porter
12/3/07
The Long and the Short of It

Sitting alone
concentrating on my impending demise
I forget the comfort of a group
talking about other things.

We sit around the table,
we ten, and speak of
the perceived horrors of living
with the larger group—community—
the group of one hundred and twelve nuns.

It does not raise horror in me
but a sense of liveliness,
a desperation to address new issues
to delve into our souls for nascent mysteries.

I come away, not in despair
but with a softened spot in my soul
where the old ways become woven
with the new
and fertility erupts.

Ellen Porter
11/30/07
Toward Dying

I wander further along
the path of solitude.

In this November cold
I vow to stay indoors till spring.

Chilled air strains conversations
until, exhausted, I lean toward dying.

But there is one who tends my liveliness,
never staying too long.

She wraps me in tenderness,
and I am not alone.

2008-03-06T06:03:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
10/29/07
All I Remember of the Presentation

She speeds through her knowledge:
a train reeling crazily
down its wooden tracks.
rat-a-tat-tat

My mind disengages
sorry to be trapped
between stations.

I slip into fragile mortality
and focus on this desperate body
traveling a fly-away train.

She does not finish til sunset
pulls up to the station window
collects her messages like used tickets
and marches away.

Ellen Porter
10/06/07
Distraction

Birdsong
embellishes silence.
How dare it interrupt
my prayer?

My hands flutter
around my head
in shame.

Ellen Porter
11/28/07
my belly protrudes

i sit waiting for the
words of my Beloved.
my belly protrudes
like that of a donkey:
it holds the words to
my Beloved.
it contracts, pregnant
with anxious words of love.

my belly protrudes
like that of a pregnant donkey.
it belies a foolish body
making me the laughingstock.
but my heart scours
my belly’s gift
making my whole substance
ready for receiving Her words, for speaking my own,
tinkering with the elaborate intricacies
of a puzzle:
union made perfect.

Ellen Porter
10/1/07
Roses

October and the roses still bloom
not in summer profusion
but flower by single flower
white, pale gold and skin-pink,
lavender.

Save a holocaust,
November is inevitable
and will frost the blooms
with granulated snow.

I come to the hammock
and check it for rain
left over from the night before:
too damp to lie down and dream.

I push against the season
resentful
with bitter chill.

Ellen Porter
12/09/07
The Lift

The final days of this year
find me counting out
blessings, banes and breath.

The elevator dies and with that death.

Ellen Porter
12/18/07
Torture

Last night
after a metal gray day of depression,
I dreamed of
torturing
my beloved cat.
I tied her with a rubber strap into a tree, yowling.

I profess to seek the Beloved
but my cruelty is brought to the light
of a bright and swelling summer’s day.
I do not seek the Beloved.
I inflict pain and imprisonment
on this poor body.

I am the orange tabby.
There is no one to save me
but You and my howling self.

my ability to leave the house.
I cannot climb the stairs;
my lungs protest, refuse.

So, I am joyfully confined,
a happy prisoner to solitude.
While others drive off
to chant their prayers and praises,
I sit in my chair,
testing pen and paper,
eating peanuts from my tarnished blue bowl.

2008-03-03T06:06:00.002-05:00

Ellen Porter
11/11/07
Air

The beautiful, sufficient air
fills my little room
and I bow in gratitude
to my Beloved.

She offers me breath of Her breath
but I cannot receive enough
to fill my devastated lung.

Oh, Beloved
do not stop offering your gift, my air.
Stay close, Unbegotten One, stay near.

Ellen Porter
10/09/07
depression

i claim it is my life’s work
but who is it that loves a poet?
the words set down in habit—
like a hen laying eggs—
left behind in an old notebook
at my death
and like my mother’s verse before me
tossed, unread, into the flames.

what is there to do
with an old poem?
with a dying poet?

a life’s work
and nothing spoken
to save.

Ellen Porter
10/11/07
hours later i slept

last night the man
spoke to us with
honey in his mouth
made me believe—
for as long as a gnat
flutters over rotting fruit—
that life could change
if only one soul
by one soul
metanoia

and hours later i slept
i dreamt death would come soon
to the whole pitiful world
and then i awoke

in the blue-black hole
inside my eyes
i searched for this prophet
to ask him
and what then of your metanoia?

from some dark and grinning place
he whispered back
this is the real thing
alleluia

Ellen Porter
11/03/07
morro bay

there is a refuge on
morro rock
falcons i believe
the rock wired and barreled against
amateur tourists looking for
a challenging climb

we are pushed as far west
as land permits there is only
the wild sea
the last untamed chaos
barring space travel through
the planets and stars

and the sea taunts us
growing breakers tall as heaven
then banging tons of salty water
near our timid feet

we watch
captive to the maelstrom
and slip one foot forward
migration
daring back the sea

Ellen Porter
10/14/07
Resting Place

The friend of my Beloved
comes with his wrinkled face
pulled down to his feet
and lashes moist
with dribbling tears.

Why are you crying,
Hafiz?

In laughter
you have a place to play,
but without shadows
our Beloved has
no shade
in which
to rest.

Ellen Porter
9/21/07
The Lap of God
(after Hafiz)

You say you are tired
of seeking but never finding
the monastery chapel
when God is at home.

Listen!
The Beloved hangs around
the monastery whenever a
dear friend is there.

Why not
look in a mirror?
Stop all your exhaustive seeking
and rest,
laughing and singing
in the lap of God.

Ellen Porter
9/18/07
To the Guest in My House
(after Hafiz)

I begin to give
love away
to the guest in my house.

She smiles and laughs
not knowing it is God
she is receiving.

And God laughs
kissing me on the cheek
while I nearly faint with pleasure.

She is offering more and more
love to give away.

My pockets are filled
with Her presence.

2008-02-28T00:05:00.003-05:00

Ellen Porter
10/11/07
Against the Banana Tree

An old toothless man
sits on the ground
resting his back against
a banana tree.
He clings to one foot
with both hands
trying to suck his big toe.

I say to Hafiz
there is so much to be done
to facilitate the meeting of
the soul and the Beloved.
How can he sit there
trying to suck his toe?
It’s a disgrace.

Hafiz laughs and answers
By watching the man and judging
what are you doing to ensure
a meeting with the Beloved?

With that, Hafiz sits down
beside the toothless old man
and tries to suck his big toe.
He looks at me and grins.
He opens his mouth large
as a carved pumpkin
and shouts

LIGHTEN UP!

Ellen Porter
12/14/07
Deception

Poems have blossomed
in response to the great poets:
Rumi, Ryoken, Hafiz.
But these words are imitation:
a sparrow singing
to sound like a red-winged blackbird.

Sometimes a close likeness,
but the song is never true.
The love I pen is not honest
for friends or the homeless or the birds.
I change day to day in my illness
and refuse visitors.
Save one or two, I would
rather be alone.

Perhaps it is the greatest sin of all
to pretend to be a lover of souls
when in fact my heart grows dark and weary.

Ellen Porter
11/19/07
Hospice

I step into hospice,
and after twenty years
give up the tedious, painful, ignominious fight.

I float here, memorizing my days
my numbered, peaceful moments of pure joy.

There is no shame here, strangling my spirit
like kudzu in Southern trees.
Only resignation, a grateful relaxation
of body, a jelly fish washed to shore,
waiting to breathe, with the next wave,
its burden of water.

I do not hurry toward death
but like an alley cat
I peek around the corner
curiosity rustling my mind.

Ellen Porter
5/25/07
Morning Song
(after Mary Oliver)

I rise late this morning
and go to my chair,
dawn unfolding like a lazy flower.
The daily bird is halfway
through her song,
calling, calling other birds,
the stray raccoon, the city cats, the rhymer.
I breathe deeply,
hoping to catch the bit
of dawn I missed.
Somewhere in the
intermittent light
the elusive poet
lingers.

Ellen Porter
10/13/07
respiration

my lung
heaped with ashes
radiation burned
yet i breathe
with dignity
i breathe

my lung
air polished
and spit out again
i breathe
a jar of oxygen
i breathe

my lung
and the blackness
of my lung
repudiates normalcy
damns intimacy
to sugared fluff
but yet
i breathe
and again
and again
i breathe

Ellen Porter
12/01/07
the house boat

the house boat
nearly abandoned by sunrise
hugs the dock, shackled with rope and chain.
on the tether post, high enough to meet the river-tide’s demands,
a flowering egret waits stone still
spying through water for silvery fins:
early morning breakfast.
if there is a tenant there,
skipper of the house on logs,
a blond and freckled man, perhaps,
he might know more than any other
the egret’s stare,
the whole world floating and echoing on water.

Ellen Porter
11/11/07
To Mary Oliver

She says she is
less useful than a tare
or a sparrow

she who sustains
the words flowing
from my spirit to paper.

If I could meet her
at the tide pool edge
of the sea

I would tell her
the magnitude of her gift,
this poet,
and she would not believe.

2008-02-25T01:34:00.002-05:00

Ellen Porter
10/18/07
After Reading Rumi

“Friend, our closeness is this: anywhere you
put your foot, feel me in the firmness under you.”

Stepping from stone to mossy stone
pulled toward ocean breakers;
too close, I am drenched in salted spray
too careful, I am left arid, shriveling.

This is what it is like
loving a friend or the Beloved
a fragile line, narrow as string
leading ever closer to the sea
to the center.

Ellen Porter
12/10/07
december gift

A cardboard box arrives, fed ex,
from california to erie.

i smell it, shake it softly
slit its edges with a sharpened blade.

tangerines! perfect globes,
sweet juice running through eager fingers
peeling ever so easily.

the Beloved has remembered me dearly:
seeded gift of white December.

Ellen Porter
11/16/07
Hospice

All morning, phone calls
inquiring after my death.

Have I come these twenty years
fighting the cells dividing
amongst themselves, malignant,
have I come this far to a place
of no alternatives
where everything points graveward?

There is a shuddering behind my
single breast
as I seek out the word “hospice.”
I cannot promise six more months,
nor can I deny the possibility of years.

I chat with doctors
as though I were a stranger,
uninvolved, and when I am finished
I abandon the receiver
stow away the debris of information
and return to a novel
where death is daily fare.

Ellen Porter
11/29/07
Migration

The geese flying south,
the Mariposas winging flight
to that specific eucalyptus branch…
I do not understand this pulling of the moon
but I know it is true.

I can feel the tugging along
the soft musculature
of my arms and legs,
a fleeing back to safe haven.
It is not something I plan,
not a whim to be guided.

But like the butterfly
I am drawn by instinct
away from my pen and ink
away, into silence and separation.

Ellen Porter
10/12/07
Reluctance

The hammock rocks gently
in the autumn rustle of air
its bed damp from yesterday’s drizzle.
I do not lie down.

Early October
and I should be grateful
for these precious few days of
lapis sky and gliding sun.
But my heart cries rebellion
as I see in the image snapped behind my eyes:
the ropes and netting folded in,
the poles, cold iron against
reluctant fingers.
It must come down,
come down
and yet I stand staring
daring another Indian summer.

Ellen Porter
19/19/07
The Dog and Rumi

Visiting overnight
with neighboring monks
I rise well after dawn
skip matins, but not breakfast,
and then feed on Rumi.

Rumi likes dogs;
from them he learns lessons in
humility and faithfulness
as from a beloved friend.,

I would like to be Rumi’s dog
stretched out like a pelt
on my blanket
feigning sleep,
secretly absorbing his holy wisdom
to toss back to him later,
a mute but eager disciple.

Ellen Porter
12/17/07
to demetrius dumm osb

so many theories, laws, theologies
tempting the rational ones
down a path that promises
god.

why make the Beloved so
inaccessible?

all that is needed
is a heart full of love
and an open hand.

2008-02-21T06:05:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
11/15/07
Aesthetics

Question:
I have no right to say
I am seeking God.
I do not let go of
the dross of this world.
I cling to
the blackbird, chrysanthemums,
the running stream, and my blue quilt.
How can I say
I yearn for the Beloved
while I harbor
this haven of delights?

Answer:
Your haven of delights,
the colors of autumn leaves,
the twirling of rabbit whiskers,
the neighborhood street cat;
these all are children
of your Beloved.
Do not stray too far,
searching.
You will miss your Friend
lurking in the backyard

Ellen Porter
12/02/07
Death By Cancer (for MB)

Death is slow in coming;
my body disintegrating piece by piece.

I do not mind the topic of death
except in leaving you.
My pride—
not affected by this dying—
lets me think I am indispensable.

Death is slow in coming;
I do not know how to untangle our souls.
I find myself inhabiting solitude—
all but you, cast off for silence sake.

Ellen Porter
12/12/07
Homeless and Keen

Homeless and keen,
Rose,
addicted to her thirty street-wise cats and
addicted to begging.

We see her pushing along
her shopping cart filled
with fast food
cat food
and all her earthly rags.
Back bent and knees bowed from malnutrition
she walks along the tracks
wrapped in winter pain

to our back door.
She leaves her finger on the bell
until, half deafened, we call to her.
She needs toilet paper for the cats’ box
and $200 for rent.
We give her the toilet paper and
send her away.

Every day she comes
and each day we fall short.
Our choice:
logic and psychology or
the blistering Beatitudes of Christ.

Ellen Porter
11/08/07
longing for the beloved

to my beloved
i sing a melody of longing
my body grows large
waxing in sloth
i am ill with malaise

come to me and cleanse me
fill my heart with the balm of your heart
enliven me even as i die
my body hides itself in shame
i have lost all beauty
o beloved, regard me
and stay close by

Ellen Porter
9/18/07
Redwood and Pine

She is visiting from California
where redwood trees enfold
shadowed air within their sacred groves.

I take her to my holy place
a garden, secluded like Eden
with promises of heaven.

I lie in my hammock
as she wanders.
She grows taller, shaggier,
green needles resting on her shoulders,
prickling her hair.
She walks from tree to tree,
pulling up the roots her feet have set down,
to plod, inviting each new tree
to meet her redwood essence.

I watch her stop before the
sentinel pine,
touch its lightning-struck trunk
and whisper to it tree-to-tree.
“We have survived consuming fire.
Don’t give up your generations;
We will survive again.”
She leaves the tang of
redwood in her wake.

Ellen Porter
11/18/07
The Dance

Throw out your pen and
precious paper
and come dance with me.

Hafiz knows the difference
between grief and muddled fear.

So give me your hand
and we will spin some
joy into your sorry body.

You may fool yourself into loneliness
but I can see you clearly
behind the eyes of the Beloved.

Don’t fret over when you’re going or where.

Start your feet shuffling
and give Hafiz a piece of your waning fire.

Ellen Porter
12/14/07
To Be Told

I was told I have six months to live,
though for the oncologist and nurse and medium
it is just a guess like
how many days of autumn
the leaves will fall before
the sycamore is bare and the
brilliant colors line its
shadows like a shroud.

I wonder what there is to fear
now that death takes me
in its grip and rattles me senseless.

What is there to protect
from a sleepy bear cub and its mother?
from the slippery edge of a glacial crevasse?
from a gun on the inner city wall?

Death is so close, so inevitable;
does my adrenaline still flow?
Will I try to save my life up till
the moment of my final breath?
Or will I finally relax:
no fear, no anticipation,
no urgency to earn and enter heaven?

2008-02-18T05:21:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
12/13/07
A Song to Ann, Once Again

I remember years ago
your black ebony eyes
your dread-locked hair.

What can a white woman say
that will not offend?

I whispered aloud to you
"Toni Morrison"
and waited for your acknowledgment of
the Nobel Prize for literature.
You did not know, and I told you.

Rippling down your flat abdomen
and your straight back was
a pride you could not share with
this white woman.

I told you that you were the only one I knew
who would care.
I was wrong of course.
But care you did.

I wished my skin was dark
and that we could rejoice that night
black to black,
no history of oppression,
joy rising in us
like bird of paradise.

Ellen Porter
12/06/07
Day Care

Still autumn
the playground steeped in snow.
Not one child with wet feet.
They push their foreheads
against window glass,
breathe blind shadows,
then turn and run across
the room of treasures
trading cold white for a book with pictures
of a playground steeped in snow.

Ellen Porter
11/22/07
Heart Song

In mystery it is written on my heart:
the clack-clack of autumn-black branches,
the music of ocean stones rolled in a watery crevice,
the pitiful voice of a hungry city cat.
In mystery these are written on my heart.

In joy it is written on my heart:
the silent glide of moonlight through the pines,
the first born crocus, contracting upward through still icy soil,
the tender smile, half hidden, by a cantankerous old man.
In these, joy is written on my heart.

In mystery these are written on my heart.
In joy these are written on my heart.
In mystery and joy my heart is full.

Ellen Porter
9/14/07
Living in the Wilds

Some poets live in the wilds
their eyes and ears and fingertips
moving over the trees like Braille.
They see deer whose wide open eyes
look back at the poet who
has befriended all the world,
and when the moon slides
silent across the skies
a doe puts its gentle muzzle in the poet’s
still and bewildered hand.
But never taming the wild,
these poets meander through beauty and darkness
crafting verse, word by feral word.

I, too, live in the wilds and try to write,
my eyes and ears and sensate heart
edging across the running sidewalks
as I slip past the crack houses
where addicts seek their own wilderness
their own wavering moons.

I see the prostitutes
their costumed bodies, like manikins,
displaying their wares in the shining night’s glow.

In my wilderness, wildflowers and tufts of grass,
sparse and brave,
push through cement slits, the sidewalks
offering their own paltry beauty.
I, too, find poems
tucked inside the city’s wilderness.
I wonder, could we sanitize the city wilds?
Does the inner-city poet hold
a different responsibility?
What verse is there
that can capture and tame this darkness?
Would any one of us be redeemed
by some enigmatic, tumbled word?

Ellen Porter
12/03/07
Rain

Is it raining?
Yes, very hard.
Did you look out the window?
Yes, it’s wet and dark.

I may be playing up sympathy
or maybe not. But in my bodily disease
I am still capable of looking out my own window.

I ease to the window ledge
find dust, left over from yesterday’s cleaning,
and a spider web—nobody home.
The latch is strained against moist wood
and I cannot loosen it to raise the window.

I breathe heavily and return to my chair.
Is it raining?
Yes, very hard.
I was at the window
but didn’t see any rain.

Your lesson for today:
Do not expect to see outdoors
when your vision focuses on
the window’s edge.

Ellen Porter
10/2/07
The China Garden

The hope rises,
a heron taking flight,
as we tease our appetites
our mouths imagining
the food our bodies yearn to taste

and then we give away
our power of choice
and with reverence
ask the chef to
give us what we need.

He is diffident in social skills
and bends his head
to view his fingers.
He has loved one of us
(now bone and ashes in an urn)
as his absent father,
long dead,
may have been loved by him.

The purity of his amazing soul singing
out to our souls,
he chooses perfectly
what will nourish us tonight.

Ellen Porter
10/4/07
Through the Rising Wind

My lung is getting better
the doctors tell me, marveling.
But as I shuffle from the car
my breath cannot find purchase

and I hunger and tussle
relying, but not faithfully,
on nose and mouth
this God-given airway.

I will never run again
but in mind’s taut attention
I feel dry wheat
whispering against young legs.

I remember running, sliding the dirt paths
through post-card golden poppies and sweet lupine
the call of red-winged blackbirds singing
harmony to the ocean’s tunes.

Remembering defibrillates the senses
vision, sound and touch
but nothing more precious than the memory of air
as I tumble through the rising wind.

2008-02-14T08:02:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
11/24/07
A Rented Canoe

A rented canoe
does not suggest efficiency
but rather a haphazard
attempt to stay above water.

Paddles dip close to turtles
lined up like school children
on a sunken tree, one last
plaything.

The lagoons stagger under
a new strangulation of reeds.
Soon there will be no corridor
of water to turn a boat.

But the beaver will remain,
the school-master heron
supervising no one with one hidden
one decorative leg.

The canoe floats in circles:
our ineffective rowing.
We are diminished by foolishness
to learning the deep kept secrets
of turtle, beaver and bird.

Ellen Porter
9/20/07
Crow

Late morning I lie
under the sentinel pine
my hair a wilderness

of green, brown, golden
needles, and my feet wrapped
around with tree dust.

A crow, black shadows for wings
opening, fluttering, pretending
to take flight, but

watching the ground, screaming
its displeasure with
my annoying presence

and secretly, seductively,
its heart as red and divided as a pomegranate,
studies, curled at my side,
the cat.

Ellen Porter
9/22/07
Hanging By Hand and Foot
(after Hafiz)

Ellen,
why are you hanging
by hand and foot
from the lower branches
of the walnut tree,
your bum exposed,
waiting to be smacked?

Why not get out of the tree and
make yourself invisible?
Then follow the laughter of the Beloved
while She tries to figure out
what in the world
you are doing.

Ellen Porter
11/15/07
listen to this

listen to this;
it is true.
i do not know the names of trees
this far east, lake erie,
except the sycamore.
i remember the sycamore in my neighbor’s
yard in California:
it traces the shape of leaves,
leaves the sound of whittling wind
in my ear.

but i do not know the other names.
i only know that some turn
glimmering red and gold
while others hang on to green
as though they might die from changing.

listen to this;
it is true.
if i were an eastern tree
i would be almost ready
to shed my leaves, burnished
with vivid color.
if only i were sure of spring
the black branches of winter would clack-clack,
but hold no terror.

Ellen Porter
10/25/07
Poem

The pen tumbles from my hand
as I consider the progression
of cancer in this
wild and willful body.

The dawning hours of inking
leave me
sterile with worry.

Is it not possible that
words might curtail
the indomitable growth,
that creation alone
might meet the hungering dark?

I take up pen
and squeeze the poem
perhaps to glean some phrase
some line
to convert this piercing destruction
into light.

Ellen Porter
10/07/07
The Cat
(after Hafiz)

I am tumbling around
in my chair
like the unobservable
cycle of wash and rinse.

Even Hafiz is troubled today.

The cat–the one we adopted from the streets
as our personal guardian–
was found stiff and dead
like a floundered fish
or a broken bough.

I see no reason for this death
except she hissed at
one too many friends.

Even Hafiz saw her sharp little teeth
bared for thunder.

Ellen Porter
11/20/07
These Embers Burning

These embers
burning in my knee
might brighten into flame again
the inner wicked pain is
no sweet agony.

My mind dabbles at the edges
I, no dilettante of pain
but a new-come visitor
eager to meander other rooms.

The drug begins to take effect
the ice digs deep into the swollen skin.
I do not know the cause of
this unwelcome guest, this ache
but I will not unbolt the door again.

2008-02-11T06:23:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
11/23/07
A Glimpse of the Godhead

Religion, so often a failed endeavor,
finds growing room, unconventional,
through the poet’s loose-lipped pen.

It is rare that the Beloved
slips and slides away from the beginner’s heart,
but rather, She cajoles, guiding toward
a glimpse of the Godhead—
a furtive glance—
not enough to kill the poet
but to give her courage to stretch her reach
beyond the glorious spread of sycamore,
snow, the sun lending color to all the earth.

Religion, so far, unconventional,
leads the poet, not toward law and decree,
but to a burst of light
soft and passionate
running through her hungering soul.

Ellen Porter
10/31/07
Counterpoint

The joy of the day
comes in great sizzling moments of delight:
the golden, crimson autumn trees
trembling in the sun
the lift of blackbird wings
beneath rivulets of wind
the counterpoint of cloud and sky

And in these dazzling moments of vast beauty
I hold you ever tighter against my skin—
you do not recognize the teetering of my soul

One day I will have loved you
so much
that your loss, through my death or yours
or the fracture of daily time
will leave me empty, utterly still,
mourning

You do not mourn what you haven’t loved

Then only the trees, the blackbirds,
the thunderous sky
will remain.

Ellen Porter
11/27/07
hand in hand

i do not love
with bodily passions
pushing their way into
utter chaos

it is so limiting

i prefer to stray
along ocean’s hem
or mountain’s skirt
hand in hand,
our friendship so woven
it needs neither body
nor soul to speak.

some would call me repressed
but there are a few
who understand that celibacy
brings within reach
the crashing din of ocean
the mountain’s thunderous reply.

these, our beautiful bodies,
hand in hand
receive together
the passion of nature gone
ecstatically wild

Ellen Porter
11/12/07
late in love

our love, my dearest friend
comes late in life
mere moments of dazzling joy

against the backdrop of a stage
where in this shortened moment—
the winter of my days—

we enact the final scenes
rather than the play’s beginnings.
the love we tender will

break us, shatter us
like ice, splintered by a rock
on fragile water,

this my body,
broken open,
bereft.

Ellen Porter
Patient and Caregiver: A Poem For Only Two

Last night moaning
kept me awake
trembling, nearly fainting,
unusual pain,
my own groans
forbidding breath.

So is this how it is to die?
A slow slippery dip
into suffering?

Perhaps worst of all
there is the constant need
to be attended. Often
without the asking,
needs anticipated
and service given.
And again, often
I ask for more:
a glass of water, a chair moved
to suit my desires,
assistance in pulling on my jeans.

Last night proved to me
my hospice need.
I journey on and I journey on.

Ellen Porter
10/05/07
The Calm Out of Chaos
(after Rumi)

Someone sleeps in bed;
I rise in solitude.
Mine will be the greater silence.

Mouth closed
my heart blooms;
God and moonlight enter.

Sweetness fills me;
the calm out of chaos.
Nothing more to do
but, all day,
welcome silence and the Beloved.

Ellen Porter
10/20/07
There is a Pool

There is a pool, unexplored
in the center of my being—
not in my heart alone
but in lung and legs and brain.
There is a pool there
and I wander its edges.

Light green and brittle grass
give way to my footsteps.
When I drop in a stone
there are no ripples but
only surface, mirror, sheen.

I am afraid to bend down
to bend down and trail
fingers through the water
like bait.

This water, I say, bending down,
this water houses crabs,
cancer unformed and scuttling.
And bending down I dare
to wash one finger,
and I feel the legs of crabs
grabbing, pinching, playing out my life.

2008-02-07T08:12:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
11/03/07
A Few Ditties

We fear one may be missing.
But overhead among the quilts
all three cats: smug together.
They grin, watching us worry.

………………………………….

The few birds left in November
sound worried in the chilly trees.
They lean eagerly into migration.

…………………………………..

We are not far north
but winter promises ice and snow.
Still tepid, the breeze trickles
through my open window,
and, too early, I pull my blue shawl from
a seasonal drawer.

Ellen Porter
11/17/07
Corn Woman

Before I knew my Beloved
I walked casually
through the soldier straight
lines of corn.
Each stalk rose
hiding its secret delights.
I was happy then,
no yearning was awake in me.

Then suddenly,
years later, I felt the
tug of God.
I walked the fields again
looking down toward
dark and fertile ground,
up at rain-expectant sky.
And I knew it was some
mystery I sought,
some corn woman.

And years later still,
I longed for this Beloved,
searched row upon row
stalk by stalk.
And I found her in the corn
and the pregnant sky.
I turned my spirit-face inward
and discovered her waiting,
ever in my soul.

Ellen Porter
11/09/07
Growing Room

This pen in my hand
this blue lined paper
these are all I have
except my impending death.

Pen and fine paper
receive the senses of my heart.
I draw the letters of fear
and know trembling within.

Sorrow fills my hand and wrist
at the enormity of what
will be left behind.

One tiny drop of peace
in the palm of each hand.
I open my fists
drop my pen.

Palms up I pray to the Beloved
and offer this awkward solace
growing room.

Ellen Porter
Known So Well

I wonder what I know so well
as the great poet knows the woods and sea.
She names each birdsong, each weed and flower
and how they move through this astounding world.

Perhaps it is this body of decay
inhabited by a foreign foe—
cancer—
played out in breast and fragile tissue.
There is my poetic attention.
I know this physicality so well,
the name of each struggling breath,
of fluids flowing against my wild imagination,
and I am learning how to wander
through a disintegrating world.

Is it enough, the nuances of myself
to scatter ink on paper
and call it
poem?

Ellen Porter
12/07/97
Passing

If I should pass today
across the ragged edge of earth time,
I would find myself, a grasp of
mistletoe in one hand, looking for
A suitable lintel under which to linger
for a yuletide kiss.

I would scrape open my window
frozen with screws and caulking
against seasonable drafts and,
sticking my head into winter
feel snowflakes on my neck
and snowflakes on my tongue.

I would light a fire behind the grating
and dry my fingers, warm my ears,
drift into a fragile nap, smiling
in my sleep.

And then, sated with this world,
I would simply let go
and, curious and peaceful and calm
step across the boundaries of earth time
to learn what replaces snowflakes and
kisses, and fires.

Ellen Porter
9/12/07
The Art Museum

Until midmorning
the museum was closed.
The pictures hung,
portraits stealing glances at each other.
No human eyes to look
save those of the janitor
as he swept the carpets,
dusted the frames.

And then the doors were opened.
I wandered, looking;
whirling with Van Gogh’s skies
dipping with water lilies of Monet.

Then I saw him,
standing firm as a defiant child
hands fisted at his sides
staring at Picasso’s Guernica.
His rounded face and epicanthic folds
defined his syndrome.
And as I watched him
watching the horse scream
tears came flowing from those slanted eyes
running to his lips, his chin.
Silent tears.

With my eyes, normal, glancing,
seeing what I was expected to see,
I backed away, not to disturb.
This museum, that chaotic scene
lent ownership to the boy.
My self-appreciation
rose as bile in my throat,
I dared not look again.

Ellen Porter
11/05/07
the winds and stars

Sophia, ancestor of wisdom
you wander wild paths
at my side

i yearn for you
inhabit my heart

you wander wild paths
and teach me the winds and stars
you are generous with your holy wisdom

i yearn for you
encircle my soul

you teach me the winds and stars
you walk at my side
never again will i be satisfied
wandering this astounding world alone

inhabit me
encircle me
generous wisdom of my hungry soul

2008-02-04T06:11:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
5/16/07
Choice Conversation

She is speaking to me
across the table,
fudge-smeared bowls, sticky glasses in between:
after-supper talk.
Behind me, other companions
jabber and laugh.
I cannot hear
what she is saying.
I tell her twice,
I cannot hear.
She forces her voice
and asks a probing question.

Soon I will have hearing aids,
forms molded in perfect silence.
Will that end
the superfluous chatter
of undetermined noise
like Morse code,
heard, received, scrambled?
Dare I hope to hear
the missing grain of wisdom?

Ellen Porter
8/24/07
Generosity

Sr. Mary Margaret has seen
more than eighty years,
her face dissolved in wrinkles
running like dry river beds.
.
She comes to protest at the street corner
holding her sign high and waving
at cars that honk their approval:
Stop executions in Pennsylvania.

I saw her at the monastery,
passing the opening elevator door.
A blind sister emerged and Mary Margaret
casually took her hand and
they walked together, going always the same direction.
“We may end up in separate places, but the way
there is not too long—
just a brief detour.”

She goes to prison each week to weave peace with the inmates.
She reads with children, volunteers as driver.

She prays through her feet
grounded in god light, never sacrificing another to her oblations.
She prays early, ministers late.

Some call her saint,
a prayer embodied.
Others, so used to her they do not see.
But we will feel her absence as she ripens,
as we remember, honoring her life
and celebrating her passage.
It would not matter to her,
merely a distraction,
honoring and celebrating now.

Ellen Porter
7/4/07
July Fourth 2007

The night meets full dark
and the crowd looms
crouching like a hunting cat
paralyzed with waiting
breathing in the memories of childhood
keeping possibilities of disappointment at bay.

And then the burst
of colored light and sound:
fountains, comets, spirals.
The people shout their satisfied approval.

A child, awed by colors,
cries out against the noise
stuffing her ears with small fists
and waiting in trepidation and longing
for the next creation.

On and on, light surprises
sounding blasts of canon fire.
And then in sudden, mighty climax
it is over.
Dimmed stars brighten. Smoke dispels.
The feast day ended.

Muted, the crowd,
hardly remembering their country’s revolution,
crawls sated toward their homes and beds
striving toward Independence Day, yet again.

Ellen Porter
8/29/07
Prints of the Living

Afternoons beg your strength
the later day dripping energy
like a spring gone summer still.

And evening has no energy to spill.
You walk when you have to go there
across the tender grass leaving prints of
the living in your wake.

But morning, still shadows of night
waiting in the corners of curtain,
chattering beyond the glass pane,
You feel again the brief promise of life

knowing it will not kindle flame
but will keep you walking, will keep you
anchored to the trilling soil

until the sun pierces midday heights,
loses the shadows of maple and pine,
and reminds you, the full

conflagration of the solar orb,
that your small spark flickers
like a wayward firefly.

Ellen Porter
6/19/07
The Revenant

We walk the roadway
smooth and wide
his fingers webbed with mine.
I relax against his breath
the pull of the moon
equal for each of us.

He is tall
loose in the shoulders
brown in shirt.

There is no friendship I would rather have
and yet I cannot give myself away.
He wants to claim me
wants us to belong each to each.
But I cannot surrender
the whole of my fabric
to anyone.

Can he compromise
these three days--
long, monogamous and his--
giving me sacred time unclaimed
to honor the call of faithfulness
to my self?

And as we walk
we ponder.
How can two be three?

Ellen Porter
1/15/08
Samuel and the Beloved

Yahweh called to Samuel and the boy ran to Eli and said, “I am here.” Eli said, “I have not called you. Go back to sleep.”

Last night the alarm
sounded on the porch
three times.
With each
the wiggle of fear
fluttered strong.

I thought I heard the calling of my name.

Twice more, the alarm.
The police came
to find paper snowflakes,
a child’s project,
glittering out motion to the sensors.

Again I felt the calling.
And a third time.

The Beloved has a funny way
of getting your attention:
Samuel! “Here I am.”
Ellen! “I am here my Friend; you called me.”

I still do not know the purpose of this call,
but I wait, ready,
beckoning to God’s desire.

There is some doubt
about the truth of
this extraordinary story,
yet who, on a bet,
would not answer to
the calling of their name?

2008-01-31T06:07:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
4/15/07
Caryn, My Sister

She straddles the country.
Her body and half her mind
find living space on Lake Erie.
But her soul and the mind of her heart
belong in the west:
the northwest, the Pacific.

It is her granddaughter
acting as magnet
the urgency of watching
two become three become four.

And here in the east
I am oh so slowly, dying.
She wants, needs to
bide her time with me
as helpmate
assisting with showers
gathering things from floor to floor
as my oxygen tether
reaches its endpoint.
She cleans my room,
keeps oxygen from flame,
drives to get the next drug.
She says she feels useless
yet to me she lightens
an impossible load.

I am torn for her
stretched east and west.
My love wants her happy
her own home on the wet and stormy coast
oddly called Pacific.
And I think of losing
her close heart and want her to stay.
But east or west
she must test the magnet pull
and choose her own direction.

Ellen Porter
6/18/07
Friends

California and Kentucky
meet in Erie, Pennsylvania.
She marvels at
the coincidence and
names it a miracle.

I look at the pattern,
mouth agape like
an idiot,
and I, too, push
my finger into the plot
and stir.
Perhaps it is a miracle.

Twelve years now and
our friendship flourishes.
Yes, there are times
we reject each other:
blame or anger or withdrawal.
But then we remember
the wonder of it all,
discard our disputes
and bow to each other
in holy surprise.
This is the miracle.

Ellen Porter
6/26/07
Introspectively, Subjectively, My Self

I do not think of death anymore
but of disability.
They say the tumor has shrunken
a sea anemone
probed with a single finger
pulling in around itself
prickling, greedy.
I am grateful
do not misunderstand.
But I am left to deal with the residual.
Tethered to oxygen
I am restricted in my movement
room to room.
The tubing knots around my feet—
a lethargic snake
too awkward to coil.
Yet without it
I am left short of breath, panicky,
urine threatening to burst unbidden.
And there is the fatigue:
A lethargy I don’t trust.
Is it a drop in some vital function
or is it sloth, hanging loosely
upside down
waiting for some entertainment
worthy of effort?
I try not to whine;
I hope I merely explain.
It is not death I battle
but the fragments of living
I am left with
these warm summer days.

Ellen Porter
7/5/07
Pain Surprises

Pain surprises for no reason
Toes, heels and knee
A pill in the stomach.
When will it reach my feet?

Ellen Porter
6/15/07
Simplicity

She was born in
the southern hills of Pennsylvania
no plumbing, no lights
the call of God in her soul.

She threaded the country
looking for a home
found a community that nourished animals
and joined for awhile.
Then traveling on
she visited our monastery
and stayed.

Today she has been
our sister for many years.
She walks, head bowed, eyes downcast
in holy obedience
through monastery halls and grounds
delighting in deer and daffodils
and the deep solitude of the woods.

She never meets the
greeting glance of another.
When she talks,
rare and startling,
she is likely to show surprise
that she is recognized.
She knows no one’s name.

But once
at the funeral of the Polish mother
of a monastic
she was again called by God.
As the casket turned for its
final journey from the chapel,
she walked unbidden
unexpected
from her pew
and standing quietly
one hand resting on the pall
she sang
untrained
captivating
unaccompanied
an old Polish hymn.

Such courage
such generosity
issuing from her silent,
profound simplicity.

Ellen Porter
7/26/07
The Monastery Grounds

For three days now the booted, ball-capped men met outside my window. Mostly they stood and watched a piece of roped off grass growing, their imaginations of a two story, vacation home for the sisters already urging the future close. I wondered when they would begin to dig. A rabbit ran close, leaving its safe places under tree branches, under the boardwalk, to look carefully at this piece of land, newly set apart. And then the shovel, tractor-like and noisy, its huge maw breaking ground, digging, leaving these first jagged scars. The lawn, comfortable, familiar with its previous ground, lets go with grassy fingers. I yearn for simplicity, grieve this unnecessary piece of monastic progress, this confiscated bit of rabbit space.

2008-01-28T06:17:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
5/7/07
California Live Oak

He had a farmer’s heart,
my father,
but gave up the land
to support a family.
Selling insurance
grieved his spirit
so he bought a house
on an acre of
California dry land with
a three hundred year old oak
for shelter and climbing.
He cultivated orchids,
hung them in mossy baskets
from the sturdy limbs.
Raised night blooming epiphytes,
Delighting in their dark perfume.
He sold insurance and he excelled,
but he tended his soul’s need.
Now, years later,
he is dead at ninety-one.
The new people
(the man always wanted
to live in this valley)
watered the oak faithfully:
a drought resistant indigenous species.
And in time,
with roots soaked through and ruined,
it toppled, thunder loud and graceful.
The new people missed the shade;
the daughters missed their climbing space.
And unable to assuage their guilt
or to imagine future years of growth
in another tree,
quietly one night
they packed up their lives
and moved away.

Ellen Porter
4/24/07
Free Fall

I’ve not been one who
enjoys being in control of my life.
Rather, I have delighted in
watching things unfold.

I’ve held on by my fingertips
to what seems to belong to me:
a new acquaintance
a new job
a new place to put down roots
and live.

But now, still in middle age
sick as a nightmare
I am losing control in other ways,
bodily ways.
I can’t breathe without
a canister of oxygen.
I can’t walk the stairs.
I can still choose what I eat,
but am losing control of
its elimination.

There is no pride left
in watching things unfold,
no delight.
Just a bitter pitiful cry of
What next?
How much more?
Why now?

Ellen Porter
9/9/07
In a Field

In a field, sitting on a rock
cool and smooth in this early summer dawn,
I try to spin the memories of my childhood,
the stories in a web.

I remember the little things more clearly than the great:
brushing the thick coat of my
first border collie, her tail wagging,
her tongue finding my face,
climbing the oak tree out front and spying in
the picture window—
a perfect vantage point, but nothing to see—
hiking alone the hills and creeks,
smelling California winter and, after a sudden rain,
smelling the pungent wild tobacco and bushes
whose names I never knew.
The great things tangle in my mind
with other people’s stories
so I no longer know what is true:
the flood that claimed our house—
unlike Noah, we had no place to float—
the wild fires, my uncle’s death.

I wonder, sitting here on the rock in the field,
if it was a happy childhood.
I take the small green box from my pocket,
carefully pry up the lid,
poke my nose all the way in
and smell white sage.
I spit on it releasing its full scent
with my body’s moisture.
My memories grow bold, they clarify,
they take me back and bring me forward.
That pungency promises
sweet happiness as a child,
and now,
life complicated by pain,
I know by the odor of sage
that happiness
holds me comforted now:
a healing balm
captured in the little box,
blooming in my soul.

Ellen Porter
7/17/07
On Reading Mary Oliver

Early every morning
before the sun even suggests its promised
pink and gold and blue
the color of a faded wild eggshell,
I open her book and read her impossible
prose, her poems describing a world
I have never seen, really seen
with deep down vision, three dimensional
as a spring columbine, blossoms
hanging like Chinese paper lanterns,
bobbing in the gentle, greening rain.

Early every morning
I open the book and read
trying to see with her magical eyes
trying to hear with her fetal ears
sensing the heart-thudding pulse
of a new awakening world.

But I will never write a poem
as tender as hers:
the flash of humming birds,
the eyes of a best-loved dog,
the flowering of spring, summer, fall meadows,
the black water ponds.

I will never write a single line like hers,
and so I open my fist gripping the pen,
unfold the fingers and fling away the sticky web
of forced imitation.
Then unburdened by the impossible and
free to see with my own astounding eyes,
to smell the personal fragrance of my own garden,
to spread ink across the fine blank sheet,
I am surprised by gestational syllables,
as word by word,
my soul’s own midwife
delivers a poem
unique as fingered prints,
whorled and defined.

Ellen Porter
8/15/07
Shingles

Shingles should be left for roofs
not for measured rash
cascading down the nerve pathway
lifting pain to a new form of vengeance:
sharp and stabbing as a blade
bearing a small amulet
crafted on a bone-white hilt
or the slow, constant ache of
walking, searing, hip deep.

I twist in my chair
lurching for comfort and
finding only a stunning surprise:
the riddled friction of nerve and bone.

Defeated, I sip morphia
and wait to return
pain free though rummy
to the task of verse—
clarity of words forsaken,
a poem resting on an alien axis.

Ellen Porter
5/21/07
The Hammock

Next door, behind the house
and sunken to secret levels,
the garden.
Spring and summer
permit my hammock
tucked away between wall and tree
dappled in shade.
Awkward, I sit or fall,
sidle to the center.
And then I relax
to let eyes and heart explore:
rose bushes in leaf, violets
and Johnny-jump-ups carpeting beneath,
lilac, wisteria and purple columbine.
Oh, and the trees!
One in the garden’s center
round and full—leaves full on and greening.
In the corner, a sentinel pine rises 80 feet,
catches the wind,
bends and twists in healthy flexibility.
I lie in the hammock.
The wind finds purchase and
rocks me side to side.
I hang on with fists and feet.
Perfectly balanced
wind the only music,
my body sways.

Ellen Porter
1/4/08
Fear and Trepidation

You awaken me
an hour after I am accustomed to rise.
The second time you call my name
I hear the fear of death in your voice.

I am dying, yes,
but slowly,
and there is still
a lot of life left
in these bones and flesh.

Do not worry,
approaching me on tiptoe.
I will give a warning
as cancer, quiet, waning full
calls me to new and
ever more wondrous
pasture.

2008-01-24T06:05:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/14/07
Brother Thomas, Potter II.

Brother Thomas is dying
in this house today,
trading fired porcelain
for groaning breath,
still the artist
always the potter.

I reach out to frame a poem
to capture the elusive word,
while he, with fine-sketched bone
and wasting skin,
ever in solitude,
brings forth
his ultimate firing.

Ellen Porter
6/10/07
For His Daughter, Anne

Will’s resurrection came early.
He planned to be with us at Easter,
his family gathered round,
Eucharist and alleluias
the center of the day.

But grinning he rose
no brace or cane
his back as straight
as a forger’s iron.
He rose two weeks early.

His daughters and sons
twined themselves around each other—
orphans now—
their mother dead only a year.

They planned the psalms and scripture
for the holy day of remembrance.
But all held reluctance
in their souls.
He rose two weeks early,
jubilant,
leaving Easter alleluias
silent in their throats.

Ellen Porter
7/16/07
I Remember Only One Thing

Fifty years ago I was seven
not precocious
but freshly shining with a child’s
pure and gracious wisdom.

From California to Nebraska
we drove
through elk and buffalo herds,
through a migration of desert terrapin
stretching the golden range
to the sweet unending boundaries east and west.

We reached my father’s home, his parents,
his closely guarded history.
I opened my eyes and saw.

I remember only one thing
about my grandpa.
It is a genuine memory and
not a tale told in retrospect.
There is no story here to tell
but only a still life, black and white.

I am standing on the sidewalk at dusk
looking back at the white-washed boards
of my grandparents’ house.
Grandpa opens the door and steps into
the wind of the front porch.
I see a strong gust snatch his hat,
round and brown with curving brim.
And it sailed through the dusty air
and he ran after it,
catching up to it
on the green and brittle grass.
That is all I remember of grandpa alive.

Two years later I saw him dead,
laid out in the gladiola-sweetened air
of the front parlor.
My mother has told me the story
so it is not my own memory
save the fragrance of funeral flowers.
My grandma snatched me from my mother’s side
Lifted me coffin high and ordered me to see my grandpa--
No hat, no pipe, no cribbage deck--
I did not recognize him.
And my mother never forgave my
brief abduction.

After the burial
before the dawn
we climbed into the car
and went in search of new life
stretching across the prairies,
death absorbed until it was invisible
until I remembered only the herds
and the hat careening in the wind.

Ellen Porter
5/3/07
Oblation

She has graced our office
two years
and I do not know her title.
But I know the
shape of her spirit.

The phone insists
and she answers
pleasant, hospitable
speaking to monk and nun, solicitor
in the same easy breath:
a true Benedictine.

Day after day
she frowns at her computer
works simplicity on the keys.
(I have tried and failed
to access that machine
leaving frustration lingering on the screen
a prismed, oily cloud.)

But it is the other things,
smaller, perhaps, loving
that douse me in surprise.

She brings coffee
when she sees my need
not as servile feminine or maid
but as quiet, gracious friend.

She speaks of her lover,
a woman, unafraid,
with no apology
offering freedom
to like-hearted friends.

And in miraculous spring
there is the wonder of violets,
clutched in loose fist,
moist towels
awaiting water
from the tiny vase.

Caught by her efficiency
and touched by her grace,
I acknowledge my utter gratitude.

Ellen Porter
6/22/07
She is Electric

She touches fingers with ambassadors
speaks to the women of the nations.
Her time is metered.
Jerusalem finds her weeping,
weeping with Palestinians and Israelis alike.
She blankets the sparks of hate.
There is no world shadow
she dares not bring to light.

Her body knows the toll
of political exposure.
Illness is the premium--
this time painful, invasive, surgical--
and recovering
she is only the sister next door.
She entertains her well-intentioned visitors
with stories, jokes and the absurd.
She pirates the attention.

And there is a third persona
tempered by tears
energized by laughter.
She is mediator, counselor, friend.
When she listens
she is electric
each cell focusing in absolute concentration
on the words, the intimations of the other.
The energy builds
as she sinks her feet
deeply into God.

Political weathervane
casual trickster
deep-seated friend.
How long can she balance
the burden of division?

Ellen Porter
6/29/07
Tendrils of a Poem

An hour before dawn
too dark to trace the outlines
of the room
or the lost words of a poem, unwritten
I sit rocking
awaiting the epiphany of first light.

Outside my window
open wide before
the treasures of summer—
to release them or
to let them in
I am not certain—
tendrils of a poem
caught loosely in its beak
the morning bird sings.

Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Yesterday the maple tree

Yesterday the maple tree
watched and welcomed the potter
strolling to his studio and back.
It knew his shuffling steps
his hat pulled earward against
heat or cold.
It knew his company.

Today the maple tree
stands waiting for his glimpse—
its leaves summer soft, turned
inward with the promise of rain.
It will go on living,
its leaves, great branches,
great old hollow where the
breath of raccoon lingers.

But it will wait long,
not realizing this August evening
that, pushed and pulled
upon a gurney, blanketed in his final coolness,
he will not pass this way again.

2008-01-21T07:14:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/7/07
Brother Thomas, Potter I.

Your hands
the miraculous modelers
of clay, remain long
and thin and beautiful
while the sum of your essence,
body and soul,
splinters like dry wood,
thirsting for rain.
It is the antithesis of
clay to porcelain.
Secret glazes have
fashioned pots
inimitable
their value in museums
their sacredness in your heart
keep them the sole
gift of your flaming spirit.

Now cancer captivates your body.
Today you cannot sit at your wheel
and today you cannot lift virgin clay.
You rest in your studio
waiting as malignant cells
take your magnificent dreams
and, pressing them earthbound,
forbid their transformation to miracle from clay.

Ellen Porter
7/30/07
Fivefold Gift

These eyes, opening early
blinking moistly against new light
one eye squinted closed to
bring the images sharp and focused.
Even now, before sunrise defines
what lies in darkness
my vision waits, lurking to bring
shadow to form.

And my skin trembles with
early morning air, moving soft
and often.

My ears wait for
birdsong, a sense on edge
searching out habitable branches,
tentative, eager.

The smell of summer lingers
through the night, tangy,
sun-dusted, sweet.

And milky coffee,
every morning the taste
of darkness, not yet diluted,
welcomes me to a pure and feral dawn.

No matter what lies behind the shadows—
what poems, what creatures, what fragile trees—
these senses quiver in readiness to claim
one unrepeatable, inexplicable
new day.

Ellen Porter
8/22/07
I Have Spoken Enough of Death

I have spoken enough of death
and now put it to sleep
until its time to rise again.
Who knows? Maybe my death approaches,
or the one whose eyes I meet
strolling the garden, blissfully
unaware of death’s lurking, perhaps
one of us will be next to lie
wooden, waxen, stilted, to be viewed
in order that this new loss be believed.

I have spoken enough of death
and now will walk,
heart and spirit relieved, I will walk
among the trees, the maple, the
pine, and the berry bushes, their
fruit long eaten by raucous birds.
I will walk close and feel the roots
settling beneath my feet, my bare feet
remembering the life spreading underground,
new shoots nudging their way sunward.

Ellen Porter
6/23/07
Niggling

All day long
from its predawn conception
till the solstice sun
balanced on the edge of Lake Erie
the poem niggled at my mind.

A hundred times
I returned to my clip board
my chair
and read the lines aloud,
scratched out a word here
added another there.

Now, perhaps a finished product,
it lies on the floor beside my chair.
The poem watches me
dares me not to pick it up
and read again.
I look away
hoping the dark will fall soon
and hoping—
hope against hope—
that it will leave me
to sleep dreamless
through the night,
collecting fodder for
the poem that may
steal away tomorrow.

Ellen Porter
8/28/07
Separation

You boarded the one fifteen train to Chicago
and in our last minutes together
we watched the stars against
the deepest darkness, night softening the
whirling of the spheres.

As I drive home
my mind imagines you,
hurling past dried up stores,
half-used railway stations,
long stretches of weedy fields, pungent,
in air too dark to see.

At home, in my bed,
I watch two become three and no sleep
to conquer twitching muscles of
worry for tomorrow’s weary day.
We may never meet again
and that slides across my heart,
rapids drifting cold stones,
and no regrets.
It was a good time here,
your visit, my hospitality.

And as I listen, quiet, sheets pulled back
against the August heat,
I hear the groaning whistle of another train,
yours racing far ahead,
and wonder how you would parse
the short span of these
long-anticipated days.

Ellen Porter
6/3/07
Symptoms

Twenty years ago
when I received
the burden of the word,
when my body was named cancerous,
I expected certain things—
pain and wasting, nausea perhaps,
most certainly an early death.

But I did not expect
to be surprised.
I was startled by
the sudden breathlessness,
the dizziness that
leads to fainting
and the awful, drenching sweat.

After all this time,
two decades,
I am grateful to barter away
the expected horrors
that never came to fruition.
The other manifestations
are no longer a surprise
but instead, a long
disruptive grace.

Ellen Porter
7/19/07
Wild Places

Until recently
I have found God only
in wild places:
while surfing Pacific waves
an eye open for dolphin or whale;
scrambling through granite bowls
the Sierra carved by glacial ice;
or walking desert arroyos
keeping watch for snake and cougar.
God is god of astounding vision,
of harmonies spawned in windy corners,
of the fragrance of white sage.

But in these last years,
confined by the inner city,
I find another kind of wild space:
drug dealers cruising,
beckoning young women,
prostitutes willing to sacrifice their souls
for the next temporary dose of heaven;
garden plots torn up, tomatoes flung
like ready-made grenades;
and occasionally wildflowers pushing up
through sidewalk cracks.
I begin to see God’s fingerprints.

Now, early in the morning
before the sun finds its path to my window
I take up fine blank paper and pen
and stare into the wild places of my soul.
God has followed me even here.

2008-01-17T06:19:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
7/31/07
At Bay

The journey through this
cluttered, wild terrain
the pathway strewn with
fear and joy and exaltation
this journey buoys me up
fascinated by windward, unsuspected detritus.

My body holds the fear
the tender gifts at bay
one brief horror after another
one decorated birdsong
cradled, clay-formed, stuffed in waiting pockets,
held at bay.

And I wonder
what bay holds my delight
my terrors, sprung loose and trembling.
What bay is this—water, ice,
the sound of a neglected boat
left banging against the water-worn pier?

And what God wanders with me
knowing the paths I will follow
The tight strung corners I will turn?
Or maybe not knowing,
Maybe God follows along,
a bright and curious journeyer
caught up in the golden, the bleak,
the day’s terrible and brilliant surprises.

Ellen Porter
8/6/070
Fallow Days

Some mornings
rising early
perhaps too early for that

particular day,
I follow my routine:
swallowing pills, checking blood sugar

injecting insulin.
And then yogurt and
the first, delectable cup of coffee

creamy brown and hot.
Next reading the poets
of the moment:

Mary Oliver and Jane Kenyon
enriched by their metaphors
jealous of their consistent excellence

I pick up pen and paper
and try to stir the ink
in directions of beauty.

On some of these days,
following the first sips of coffee,
it is better to return to bed

return to dream space
until the sky is bright
and the new light, ready.

Ellen Porter
7/9/07
House Plants at the Priory

Twelve years by the window
parent to forty plants
and I don’t know its name, its lineage.

The purple knobby green, forgiving, dry
leaves folded on themselves
clutching water until
I see and fill.

And then it opens wide
branches arching with an ancient pleasure
adorning the corner
coveting light.

Ivy and philodendron ignore
my watering scheme
waiting
flourishing
until I tend their souls.

A task of awe
terrible
to be responsible for life,
life so reliant as this,
these twelve fragile years.

Ellen Porter
8/23/07
My Fingers Quiver

My fingers quiver as I
balance the book of poets
on my palms, searching
out the beauty, the hidden
source of words made holy,
the pools of undifferentiated light.

Some days my malleable soul
leaps laughing into the nutritive soup
of creativity. And poems
lift from the paper, alive with an
energy distilled from
air and moon, and shadowed oaks.

But other days,
the soul lies dormant,
paralyzed by outer fiats
demanding uniformity, demure peace,
painful, grotesque similarity.
It sets my spirit quivering.

No words can form a poem
issuing from trembling hands. No?
But wait!
The trembling itself may lend the
fragile impetus, the threadbare creativity.
Quick, don’t let the fingers rest!
The trembling, the trembling.

Ellen Porter
8/17/07
Separate Grief

At first dawn,
the light promised but not yet given,
less oxygen is required
from the air of this house:
the potter died last night.

His disease, my own,
I stood wondering in my room,
wondering to what solitude I could escape
while others mourned their secret grief
around his bed.

You came into my room,
not knowing me well,
but well enough,
and offered—
no, urged—
your hospitality.
You took me silently, in strength
and the stamina of orchids drinking air,
and led me to your house next door.
You let me choose a room
and you let me linger in solitude.

A few hours later, my heart settled
back to the center of my belly,
I turned and, receiving your kiss on my cheek,
the seal of a vow,
I reached across the graveled lot and ventured home.

Ellen Porter
5/26/07
Suspended Between

I am living this new day
not dying.

Tiny things that I can do,
I do alone,
spinning energy, defying sloth.
I can write a poem at dawn,
can pull my quilt, handmade, personal,
taut and even across the abandoned bed.
I can return cloth napkins to their basket and
hide the salt and pepper behind cupboard doors.

But I cannot sweep the floor,
buy fresh vegetables at the local market,
light the candles or the stove
(oxygen sustains my necessary breath)
I cannot drive the car or
enjoy the privacy of showering alone.

I am living this new day
and dying.

Each moment etches new designs
against my soul.

Ellen Porter
9/2/07
What God Intended

Are there moments
in this earthbound journey
when we slip smoothly
between this world and the next—
moments when we become
perfectly what God intended?

I have felt those moments
at sunrise on glacial peaks;
in the ocean, the waves insouciant,
bearing me above shark and shale;
wandering, stunned beneath the
giant redwoods called sequoia.

But they do not last,
these moments of joyful mystery.
These perfect moments pulling me on
and pulling me on
until one day, I will slide
smoothly out of this world
and perfectly, permanently,
as God intended,
slip into the next one singing.

2008-01-14T06:00:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
6/25/07
Anniversary and Solitude

The morning bird sings
and today a second voice
trills along toward sunrise.
Up early,
I regret yesterday’s fatigue.
But the festive meal
grilled in the garden
compensated for this morning’s restlessness.
We celebrated a delicious marriage.
They have served each other willingly
for fifty years
guaranteeing their loving, lasting bond.
He anticipates her need for salt.
She retrieves his windblown napkin.
We feast on salmon, lemon, onions, dill,
fresh, sweet strawberries.
How could I have retreated early
to the solitude of my cell?

Ellen Porter
8/8/07
Erie, Pennsylvania 2007

Since early spring
a profusion of daffodils, crocus and lilac
there has been no rain.

August now finally
finds lightning flashing
heat lightening carrying
with it drought-breaking water.
It falls at night
leaving me not completely
convinced that it came at all
save the sidewalk puddles
the small pools of ancient moisture
collected in my hammock.

The rain, the natives notice
is enough to turn the grasses green
but, they warn with a homelander’s
pessimism, not enough to fill the wells.
The men rock back, resting on porch railings,
glancing skyward.
They nod or shake their heads
wondering surely what hidden surprises,
loss or boon, September and October
and the grape harvest might bring.

Inside, the women, their histories
thick with weather, prepare the jars
for pickles, tomatoes, peach preserves.
They know, summer by summer,
that rain will fall, that
harvest, large or small will follow
the offerings of another season.
The canning jars sink into water
boiling, sterile, waiting for miracles.

Ellen Porter
8/24/07
Hospitality

Sr. Mary Margaret has seen
more than eighty years,
her face dissolved in wrinkles
running like dry riverbeds
from eyes to chin and up to her brow.

She comes to protest at the street corner
holding her sign high and waving
at cars that honk their approval:
Stop executions in Pennsylvania.

I saw her at the monastery,
passing the opening elevator door.
A blind sister emerged and Mary Margaret
casually took her hand and
they walked together, going always the same direction.
“We may end up in separate places, but the way
there is not too long—
just a brief detour.”

She goes to prison each week to weave peace with the inmates.
She reads with children, volunteers as driver.

She prays through her feet
grounded in god light, never sacrificing another to her oblations.
She prays early, ministers late.

Some call her saint,
a prayer embodied.
Others, so used to her they do not see.
But we will feel her absence as she ripens,
as we remember, honoring her life
and celebrating her passage.
It would not matter to her,
merely a distraction,
honoring and celebrating now.

Ellen Porter
5/6/07
My Father, Growing

I really hadn’t known until he was 54
and it was Christmas.
I was 18 and curious as a newborn
watching with wisdom eyes.

Dora, black as soot,
baked for the choir party.
She sang versatile soprano
like a prepubescent boy or
the full-bodied woman that she was.
She brought cheesecake, cookies and tarts,
brought them to the back door
then turned and left
sensitive to something I could not see.

Later, at the festive gathering,
I searched the candled rooms for her.
My mother, complicit,
whispered in my ear,
“Daddy won’t let Negroes in the house
except for ironing and cleaning.”
The four paid soloists were banished.
My father at 54, a racist,
and for the first time
I felt myself torn with jagged edges
from his familial frame.

Years later, he was 89,
and home was in skilled care.
he couldn’t go to church
so Mrs. Barnes, black as a horse’s hooves,
came every week to offer the host
and he received it with an exuberant “Amen!”
And in his loneliness
they talked and talked,
and he invited her to stay for supper
in the formal dining room.
Week after week they sat together
weaving a new reality.
My father was 89,
a changed man.

Ellen Porter
4/10/07
Seasons of the Moon

This illness is
malleable as the moon.
In the dark of the season
there are no symptoms
save air hunger,
breaths my lungs have
forgotten to use.

As a sliver of light
waxes tentative
through the black branches
of a solstice tree
new pain tickles
the edges of my body:
my right foot
both knees burning like dry ice.

Half full
a balanced moon
and I don’t know
which side I walk.
Am I a slacker
using diagnoses as excuse?
Or am I denying the
travesty that lurks,
destroying cells,
blooming into lung flowers?

Time pulls the moon complete:
a white and shining orb.
Disease is fully focused in the winter sky.
No balance here
just clean vision
of cells run wild.

This illness,
malleable as the moon,
grinds its
inevitable journey
through my vast, arcane
invisible soul.

Ellen Porter
6/8/07
Surprised By Pain

It comes at night
waking me
pulling me from dreams
so deep I cannot remember.

It comes, the pain,
sudden, intense
fingers plying nerve endings
across fragile bones.

In the dark
I worry--
unreasonable--
metastases, neuropathy,
and switch on the light.
Vision stares down fear.
I swallow a pill
and push my feet
the aching pain
hard against unyielding floorboards.
I wait.
Perhaps dreams will return again
spinning their covert wisdom.

Ellen Porter
7/24/07
We Grow Familiar

Best friends
and as different
as sturdy gull from crested heron.

We set apart this time
this week of holy leisure
and relax against each other
two who slither from their
work-a-day skins
left moist and shiny
to greet each other
surprised by new glistening faces
surprised by new intimate words.

And we are not disconcerted
when newness brings rough-edged regret.
We are not disconcerted when
we try to bend the other,
like training a trellis’ vine,
in our own peculiar ways.

She tells me I should wear shoes
avoiding splinters, bits of broken water-worked glass,
germs from birds who have walked this way before us.
And I, trailing fifty-nine years of
bare feet behind me
ignore her warning as
we walk the boardwalk
safely to the lake’s ruffled edge.

Or I tell her to be patient
to bide her time with me
while she, scowling, pacing
insists on taking action now—
an eager archer with bowstring taut
ready to test the opening slash
of waiting air.

We shrug and our souls
leap a bit in apprehension
as we sidle toward each other
toward hard-won, faithful familiarity.

2008-01-10T06:49:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/9/07
Ancestors

I went to see her, my Granny, every week
once I could drive and my mother allowed the car.
Before that, I would ride with my grandmother
in the back seat, my father driving from
one ancestral home to another,
and lay my head in her lap as she stroked
my hair with ginger love.

But now, nearly grown at eighteen,
I could go at my leisure, though I missed
the childtime moments in her lap.

Granny, tell me about Will.
I’d asked her a myriad of times before and she’d told.
She was eighteen, too, and a teacher,
restless and eager to know the world.
Will wooed her and she loved him.
They strolled the leaf-laden paths
of the town center and
leaned against the cold and blackwashed lamp poles,
looking at each other in amazed surprise.
And how they laughed!
They laughed and their great imaginations
built a life together.
And they were only eighteen.
But her restlessness and eagerness to see
tore her reluctant and resigned
from his generous arms.
She would be back, she promised him,
in a year.

She stowed her life’s necessities in
a steamer trunk and set off alone for Puerto Rico.
She left Will standing, lonely already, at the pier.

She didn’t tell much about the year there, teaching,
drinking in lights from southern trees.
And when the year was over,
she came, eager as before, back to California,
but Will was gone,
no one standing at the pier.

Then, heart-hardened,
older than her nineteen years,
she was found and married by my grandfather,
an itinerant, stern, unsavory priest.
No laughter was shared between them.
They gave life to two obligatory daughters
and one of them spawned me.

Granny’d search my face and
tell me the sorrow was wound
tight around her heart
for the rest of her ages, but
that I had come and
the painful vines had loosened some,
having me love her,
constant and singular.
And she’d look away, past my head,
and I’d see Will, reflected from
behind her eyes.
I knew her restlessness had betrayed her.

Ellen Porter
8/20/07
Prose Poem
Elementary Ecology

We drove the Mojave Desert north toward Bishop, toward camping, the Sierra Nevada Mountains rising impossible, to 14,000 feet on our left. The eastern side, like a cliff or a knife blade, magnificent, paring California, east to west, in half. Mary drove, her daughter and a friend, teenaged, played, giggling, slurping cokes in the back seat. I rode shotgun. The daughter’s friend finished her drink, rolled down her window and tossed the cup. Mary pulled to the road edge and commanded, “Go back and get it. This is not a dump.” The friend, I do not remember her face or her name, sat perverse, arms folded across her chest, insubordinate. Mary shut off the motor, unperturbed and there we sat, a struggle of wills. Finally, Mary’s daughter, looking disgusted with her friend, not her mother, said, “Just go get it. Otherwise we’ll sit here all day and fry.” The friend, in defeated, disgusted, disdain, opened the door and began her trek backwards, embarrassed into ecology.

Ellen Porter
8/5/07
Hospitality

This morning
as every morning
I rise early
mid summer
just before dawn.
It is sacred time
a quiet pause spent with poets
whose verses both awe and intimidate.

There is a guest in our house today
one who rises early and
seeks companionship.
She comes to my room,
seeing promising light,
and not knocking
walks in
expecting a hug and conversation.
I rise for the thick embrace
warmer than our acquaintanceship requires.

She asks what book
absorbs my attention
and I show her the collection of Mary Oliver.

I tell her this is my time for reading,
hosting the poets,
and then for writing of my own.
I do not offer her a chair
and embarrassed,
she backs, obedient, out of the room.

Wrestling with guilt,
I wonder which is more important:
the requisite hospitality shown to a houseguest
or the eager, vibrant welcoming
of the ghosts of absent poets?

Ellen Porter
5/25/07
Morning Song (after Mary Oliver)

I rise late this morning
and go to my chair,
dawn unfolding like a lazy flower.
The daily bird is halfway
through her song,
calling, calling other birds,
the stray raccoon, the city cats, the rhymer.
I breathe deeply,
hoping to catch the bit
of dawn I missed.
Somewhere in the
intermittent light
the elusive poet
lingers.

Ellen Porter
6/16/07
Scarring

Once in my lifetime
there was a struggle
deep as death
yet survived unwittingly
with scarring.

It was not
a willing survival
but one that brought
terrifying change
startling change
scarring as the marks of a warrior.

And when it was over
when I panted my spent rage
hands on my knees, gasping air
I wondered if I would ever live again.
And panting, and circling the memory of terror
I breathed again and again.

Years later
accustomed to my ritual scars
I greet another struggle.
But this time the battle has already been fought
once for all.
I sit quietly in the midst of terror
pulling layers of fear back
like artichoke leaves
looking, fingering down
searching for what is left
in the heart
essential, transformed.

Ellen Porter
6/28/07
Sunday Afternoon

Across the parking lot
and through the gate
not latched
but crowded with wildflowers
I head toward the hammock.
Pillow, cap and bottled water
book and glasses in a bag,
it is not too heavy a burden
when I keep in mind swaying
in the dappled sun.
I went my way around the tree
planted some years past
to kindle memories of a Christmas
all but forgotten.
Squeezing tight between the tree and wall
my feet are careful not to crush
the few remaining columbine.
And then I turn the corner and
enter the sunken, hidden garden.
Around the roses, newly tended,
rid of their bed of violets,
I lightly touch an unknown bush
taller, wider, greener than I.
It startles alive
erupting small birds
winging and singing out of its branches
onto the old brick wall
wisteria laden.
I wait still, watching,
marveling at the migration
and then fall, awkward
onto the waiting bed
suspended in air.
I am home.

Ellen Porter
7/12/07
We are in a Drought

We are in a drought they say.
Every state in the nation except
Oklahoma and Texas
which are flooding.

It is difficult to worry
when each golden blue, Pennsylvania day
offers its less than timid
warmth, soothing
my shoulders
down my skeletal frame
to my toes.

But today, I went to lie in the hammock,
envisioning an hour of warm and breezy rest.
The sky was cloudy
the sidewalk damp
from sixteen drops of rain
and the hammock had
gathered a small, oh very
small, puddle of water.

Unconvinced, unintimidated, I lay
on the damp, and
studying the new straight
hollyhocks, their smiling, cartoon-like
faces welcoming
the sun and rain alike,
I turned my face to receive
the next twenty-six drops
enough to send me,
the butt of a joke,
giggling
moistly home.

2008-01-07T07:16:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
6/20/07
After the Scan

After the scan
I go to the clinic
with two essential friends.
I don’t have to wait.

The doctor comes in.
He is East Indian
young and beautiful.
Absorbs my trust.
He tries to hide
an embarrassed smile.

I have seen your scan, he tells me,
And I don’t understand.
What have you been doing
for the cancer?
Herbs? Potions?
What other magic?

I shake my head
puzzled, waiting.

He continues.
It looks better.
The tumor is smaller
the lung is clearer.
We are doing no treatment
and still you are getting better.
I don’t understand.

I ponder
wonder what in my life
would account for this miracle.

I get up early and write poems.
Listen to the morning bird sing.
I walk a mile a day with my closest friend.
I sing communal prayer
and bask at the center of a drumming circle.
I receive a weekly massage,
And I am loved by many.
I love them in return.
I read in my hammock in a secret garden.
Talk with my therapist.
Work two hours a day.
I eat what I want.

I am caught off balance with this quixotic news.
My soul quivers.

And then he adds
you also have a kidney stone.
I laugh and laugh.

Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Easter Trilogy

Walking in the snow
I wait for Easter morning
An ebony sky

No meat on Fridays
Lenten fast twice forgotten
Resurrection looms

Lenten days ended
My old lungs attempt a breath
I will not fast from air again

Ellen Porter
8/19/07
Homily For a Dead Brother

Earmarked for Pennsylvania
the jumbo jet poised for take-off
looks a hurricane in the eye.

You wait, dazed,
wandering the airport,
seeing your reflection in the eyes of strangers.

Looking like any other passenger,
you hold close to your side
the homily for a dead brother.

He died with you away,
harder for you than for him.
For him, serendipitous.

He needed to die alone
no strings tying him down to this world
the sheets left loose, encouraging escape.

You have missed it all,
yet you stand, ready,
praying for a hurricane diverted

to join the grieving ones,
stunned in silence
at his final departure.

Ellen Porter
5/30/07
Montana de Oro

We were three
walking at midday
across a field of wildflowers:
Indian paintbrush, lupine, California poppies.
The mountain at our backs turned red and gold.

Elizabeth was older than I—
old enough to be my mother—
and with us, between us
as we ran and jumped
wild with spring,
her daughter, Ruth, a child of twelve.

Across the field and down the cliff
the Pacific.
We watched for dolphin backs to break the surface,
for the spout of whales,
but what we saw was
a clear, clean shimmering blue
unbroken stillness except
for the lazy surf nibbling
at water’s edge.
A perfect day with
the song and vision of
red-winged blackbirds.

I jumped a gully
and landed on barbed wire.
A puncture on my leg.
Looking around with close intent,
I saw cow patties, flat and dry manure,
and my heart thought tetanus.
Liz took my foot in her lap
And squeezed the wound to
Make blood run.
The girl grew impatient
with my fear.

We left the day’s perfection
to seek inoculation.
Our love for each other
and the images of flower
and whales chased us to the car.
A small distraction—
life threatening but inconsequential—
in our sun drenched
salted air, magical
naiveté.

Ellen Porter
7/21/07
Same Wild Wings

The beginning of a week
free of chores and promises.

The beginning of a week
and I can sleep long
the sun not yet rising up
through the maple and oaks
up over the deep rippled blue
of Lake Erie.

I can sleep long
and in my eagerness
to give into lethargy
I come fully awake.

So I wander the unfamiliar cabin
in the dark
pulled like a lake tide
toward coffee and milk.
I wander in the dark
and listen to the morning bird
singing a familiar song.
Could this be a creature
common to these unfamiliar woods,
or did my morning bird,
same song, same wild wings,
follow me here from home?

It is the beginning of a week
and I can spend all day long
wondering.

Ellen Porter
8/12/07
Sunday

This morning
rising early is not enough.
It is not enough for generous time
to browse the poets,
to take pen and lined school paper
and set words to breath and pulse.

We must ready ourselves for church
shower away the first layer of loam
setting salvation rasping against
clean soil.
I could say I’d prefer the soil,
mixing tree dust and creek moss
returning me, a pure, natural
wonderfully tainted spirit
ready to fall to my knees
in an elaborate, complex,
moldering pile of ancient leaves.

Ellen Porter
6/9/07
Walking

Before debilitation
when I still drew oxygen
from city air,
we walked.
Two miles
threading the inner city
waving to the homeless.

We walked past the cathedral
its sacred perimeter
guarded with
a black iron fence.
Roses climbed that iron
and revealed the seasons:
bare, brown skeleton
iced with snow;
tiny leaves beginning slowly
bringing hints of orange then green;
and the sudden burst
from bud to blossom
a perfusion of roses
turning iron vivid pink;
finally a slow dying away
autumn with winter looming behind.
We walked the sidewalks
became familiar with pot holes
and cracks.
We watched green lights turn red
and dared the empty intersections.
Two miles, forty minutes,
we walked.

But now my breath is shattered
and oxygen comes from a tank.
And still, together,
we walk.

My tether limits our wanderings
and so we walk the hall—
twenty-six laps in each direction—
one mile.
Instead of the homeless
there are day care children
playing outside the window:
two sitting toe to toe
learning toddler talk.
And instead of roses
an asparagus fern
waves its tendrils around our heads.
We walk
no potholes
no intersections, no seasons.
She sets the pace,
touching the wall with magic
at each lap, calling out
“starting 17”
and in our heads we count
how many more to go.
Warding off death
one mile at a time
we walk.

2008-01-03T06:12:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/3/07
A Terrible Solitude

I stepped on the tarmac
and up the stairs.
I, alone, straddling the known world
and the beckoning wildness of Alaska.
Alone, so much beauty to bear alone.

I remember surprises
rising, impossible,
from haloed morning fog.

The knife-sharp division between
clean, clear water of the bay
and the clouded, saucer blue glacial milk;
a myriad humpback whales
waiving their oar-like wings, spouting
their life’s breath,
breaching and breaking the bay’s mirror calm;
and the eagles—
oh hundreds of them—
dry and stretching on black, igneous cliffs;
and finally rocking gently at night on my bunk
kindled by the tide.
Numberless moments
of huge and wonderful awe.

And all of it borne alone.
No one to tremble with in beauty
to gasp with in surprise.
I have never risked that terrible solitude again:
days, set aside,
out of time
unshared, unrepeatable.
I do not remember going home.

Ellen Porter
7/18/07
Death of a Benedictine Monastic

All day long my breath,
stolen by tumor,
comes in panicky, rapid patterns,
each time surprising me and
each time trying to erase from
my body’s ancient memory
the sequence of breathing.
There is no regimen to ease the panic
but soon, in less than
an interminable moment
it resolves and I continue as before
on an easy, satisfying menu of air.
Then, relaxed, I notice
the rain-ready fragrance of evening.

So I choose against
going to the funeral mass
where the community gathers
to send a sister forth to the next
faith battened, mysterious, unknown segment
of her journey.

In her last week
she, too, fought for breath,
pneumonia stealing air space
replacing steady regularity
with her own chaotic gasp.

I choose not to attend her mass
through selfish denial of comparison,
or more likely because I am compelled to stay
at the window
listening to my spirit sing
as I witness the first
drought-breaking seeds of rain.

Ellen Porter
6/11/07
Haiku Trilogy

I. Today before dawn
the morning bird is silent
my eyes won’t open.
It is too early
no reason for wakefulness
except my coffee.
Maybe just today
I will give in to excess
and return to bed.
Even the bird is sleeping.

II. I rise late today
remembering yesterday
and the ghost of dreams.
Why get up at all
another day of struggle
keeping death away?
I do not hear dawn’s bird
how can I struggle with air
if it doesn’t sing?
Breath in exchange for birdsong.

III. I rise out of sleep
my soul in competition
God awake for hours.
We gather slowly
there is no bird song today
bells peal their message.
We fall on our knees
chanting together in praise
God laughs in delight.
Our poor attempt at homage.

Ellen Porter
3/30/07
Memory

I squat down on
the edge of something perilous.
Bits of memory drift by
like floaters in failing vision.

I bend and sway to
avoid these dark fragments,
but one by two by three
they settle on the edge
and we peer at each other.

I am in pain enough,
I whisper,
making new memories
malevolent and sleek.

Go away,
I hiss.
Continue your dark journey.
Leave me alone on the edge
of this new and terrible void.

Ellen Porter
7/11/07
Rushing Out the Door

I will never complain of
summer, of heat and humidity
of dry, brownish golden brittle
grass where green should flourish.

I will never complain as long as
I can romp free of winter coats
and snow laced boots, rushing
out the door, not considering, in
shorts and barefoot with sleeveless tees.

It is God’s time to decide
when the sun closes in on darkness
early and then champions the sky,
each ray describing a different
cobalt, cornflower, cerulean blue.
It is not my decision when rain will
fall, teasing green from
the waiting bristles.

And I am content, waiting
for my skin to inhale moisture
from the air. Waiting for
flakes around my knees to soften,
elbows to lose their creases, and
bare feet their painful furrows.

I am content waiting, waiting
this long, shimmering, mid-summer’s day.

Ellen Porter
8/28/07
St. Benedict

The monastery grounds
secrete the seeds of future bounty,
with no one now to separate
weed from weed and
flower from flower.
The sister whose passion and gift
has gardened these rain blessed premises for years,
has guarded the sacred rose
urged peony and iris,
is sent away to earn a salary
to help support the monastery grounds
that grow ragged in her absence.
She has a small plot
behind her house where her
gift and passion are shrunk, lilliputian.

And the vegetable garden,
years of tomatoes, green beans,
squash grown in six inches of
mulched soil resting on clay,
the vegetable garden has been
rototilled and destroyed,
left victim to invading grass
to beautify, to simplify the monastery grounds.
To break the heart of the gardener.

Indoors, beyond the reach
of black-eyed Susan, squirrels and deer
we pray in chapel to learn the love
of God’s ecology:
not nature subject to man,
but a relationship of equality,
women, men, and nurturing soil.
A new hypocrisy in the monastery close,
St. Benedict’s face mottled with tears of
sorrow and embarrassment.

Ellen Porter
7/25/07
Up the Hillside

When I was eight and ten and twelve
and the dry hillside touched the house
with early morning, dew-moistened sage
and offered a fragrance that would
haunt me years later at fifty five and fifty nine,
when I was still young and more resilient
than was wise
I cradled the cat of the moment and
loved it with a temporary heart.
This one was snow-hare white
and spread eight toes on each front paw.
It massaged my leg with those expanded toes
and purred
not sensing its inevitable, untimely death.

The next day or perhaps a week later
I found its snowy fur up the hillside
wrapped in blood,
All the pieces of a cat save the fur
gone for coyote supper.

The cats came in succession to control the mice,
never allowed the shelter of a safe house,
my mother allergic,
my father, a farm boy all his life,
believing animals belonged outside.
And my novice heart, offering
what limited love it could muster,
broken for these brief, unsuspecting lives.

2007-12-31T06:55:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
7/28/07
A Sodden Pile of Garbage

Just this morning
I remembered Job:
a good man
no sins left hidden
no ancestors to redeem
from wickedness.
Just a good man
sitting up the side of
a sodden, staining,
reeking pile of garbage and ash.
His skin mottled with sores
from days of stretching
supplicant
in the harsh, unfriendly sun.
His body tormented
and his soul
seemingly condemned
for no apparent reason.
He flailed, distressed,
searching for God’s elusive purpose.

And as I rise early
in my cancer-ridden body
to pick up pen and fine blank paper,
I wonder at pneumonia
robbing me of my share
of reasonable breath;
I wonder at the pain of recent
stones, passing sharp and cutting
through my kidney;
I wonder at the new mysterious pain
of shingles, straddling the nerve ways
of my back and side;
I wonder at my tooth,
broken as a mastodon’s
chipped from age and use.

I wonder all day long
about Job,
his haphazard patience, his hating love
of the only god to whom
he could pray.
Not fair—
the omnipotent sole god
turned against us.
Not fair—
I try to flick the bitterness away,
a spider web,
the deceptive beauty of ancient arachnid pattern,
sticky, unforgiving.
I try to flick it away
off my eager, tenacious fingers
and begin my search
for a different, reasonable god.

I step out into oblivion.

Ellen Porter
7/31/07
At Bay

The journey through this
cluttered, wild terrain
the pathway strewn with
fear and joy and exaltation
this journey buoys me up
fascinated by windward, unsuspected detritus.

My body holds the fear
the tender gifts at bay
one brief horror after another
one decorated birdsong
cradled, clay-formed, stuffed in waiting pockets,
held at bay.

And I wonder
what bay holds my delight
my terrors, sprung loose and trembling.
What bay is this—water, ice,
the sound of a neglected boat
left banging against the water-worn pier?

And what God wanders with me
knowing the paths I will follow
The tight strung corners I will turn?
Or maybe not knowing,
Maybe God follows along,
a bright and curious journeyer
caught up in the golden, the bleak,
the day’s terrible and brilliant surprises.

Ellen Porter
8/18/07
Greening

At dawn
I glimpse a fragile gift,
clumps of leaves
rather than distinct leaf
of sycamore and maple.
And, greatest gift of all,
not seeing
what future light will bring:
a white torn and plastic bag
caught these three years
in the upper, unreachable branches.

With the projector of sun against
the sweet wall of nature,
seeing,
I will remember how many million years
it will take for this bag—
these many bags, worldwide—
to disintegrate and to reintegrate
into this trembling, threatened, lovely, greening world.

Ellen Porter
5/13/07
Matins

Every morning before dawn
I wake to night bird song.
Now, after many early risings,
I recognize the tune
but do not know the singer.

At six
the neighborhood bells
ring the new day.
Chimes slip through open windows,
sidle under doors.
I do not need a clock.

My sisters puzzle over
my morning ritual.
But with bird song
and bells
how could I rest
my head on the pillow?

Ellen Porter
4/29/07
Renovation

Faith requires new vision
though vision
long held or nascent
guarantees nothing.
Still, walking into
newly fashioned chapel space—
wood and glass
trees and water—
freshly seen,
we stir toward the sacred.

We sing first alleluias
choirs tossing tones to each other
face to face
and up to clerestory sky.

Then our voices quiet,
their praises received,
and we eye each other
tentatively in silence.
The building walls
singing, echoing,
fling our alleluias in return
up through vibrant air.

Ellen Porter
4/5/07
Stability

It all works out in the end
Sister Charlotte explains
as she finishes cleaning the bathroom
though it is my turn.
Ranked several years my senior
she scrubs with a gentleness
I have not yet learned.
There will be an eternity
of cleaning days together,
she reminds me.
Stability.

In the diningroom
I sit with an older sister
alone at table.
She smiles in welcome
for the company.
Some days it feels like
an eternity of meals
she whispers.
Stability.

We process in festive spirit
into the chapel in pairs.
Bow to the altar.
Bow to Christ in each other.
And throughout, the cantor intones
The names of sisters long dead:
Benedict and Cornelia
Be with us
Augusta and Patricia
Be with us.
She calls,
A divining rod through eternity
A hundred souls at least.
All you holy women
come and be with us.
Stability.

Ellen Porter
5/15/07
Vision

I drink morning coffee
with eyes closed.
Habit leads my hand to the cup.

Then I stand beneath the shower
squinting tightly like a newborn
my fingers memorizing
each crevice and curve,
each body part.

At dawn
singing doxologies in sacred space
darkness caught behind my eyelids
I rise with harmonies
lifting, echoing,
against the stoney walls.

Though I would never choose
against the inexplicable gift of sight,
there is some
peculiar benefit
to seeing with the inner eye.

2007-12-27T07:54:00.001-05:00

Ellen Porter
7/22/07
A Smooth Melancholy

With thirteen summers to my name
I sat on the hard black bench
playing, adagio, the smooth
melancholy of a Mozart sonata.

My dog, foaming where her red tongue
used to lap my face. Her body
still bearing life, trembling.
My father made the call and
readied himself, not with Mozart
but with the smell of sage on the
steep mountain slope behind the house.

As I played, my mother,
missing the ritual dance
my father and I performed,
called to me,
“Don’t you care at all?”
I didn’t answer but
played through to the end.

My father and I and my dog
bumbled into the car
and began her last trip into town.
And at the animal hospital
my father let me smell her
for a final time, and let me
feel her patient head against mine.
I did not go in
but my father held her
for her final breath.

Ellen Porter
8/9/07
Continuing Formation

Slouching around newly wiped dining room tables
we listen to a visiting teacher
on fire with Old Testament lore.
She speaks her surprises as much
with her hands and arms and torso
as with her constant, erudite tongue.

She tells us she can presuppose,
we being a roomful of Catholic religious,
that we already know certain basic truths
that she can leap into her treasures,
scattering facts like fireworks,
already halfway to her thesis’ proof.

But my eyes and soul wander
out the steamy windows,
shedding my biblical memories
like lines of water hurrying down a yellow, weatherproof coat
to stroll through the light falling rain, invincible,
watching the fawn, still spotted, still brave,
no eyes for my ghost,
frolicking under the summer laden apple trees.

Ellen Porter
7/27/07
Gratitude

Seven days
set aside
not for holy leisure or
sacred space
but as a celebration
of what we have given up.
No work or chores or promises to keep
but instead an emptiness
to be filled with books and naps,
resplendent meals and time
for sitting in the woods
just looking,
just listening
to the early morning whirr of insects
and birdsong.

And now those seven days
spent
the emptiness filled
with rabbits and the sudden red
of cardinals, flying,
rain-drenched maple and cottonwood.
The emptiness filled
and no going back to
change what embroiders
that spent time.
Tomorrow I will
return to paper work, telephones, errands,
full to overflowing
with rabbit whiskers
and rain.

Ellen Porter
4/30/07
Maggie

Cancer bloomed in her
like orchids
breast and ovary her gardens.

She held her fear gently
in both hands
watching blossoms open slowly.

And then surgery
cutting away each flowering strand
leaving no fertile loam.

As a gardener
turns under fallow ground
chemotherapy turned her soil impotent.

Treatment finished
she rubs her head
stubbles of a new crop of hair
and says, “It takes so long!”

And I whisper back
“A new healthy field.
You have been given years.”

Ellen Porter
8/30/07
Remembering

I do not yearn
for childhood again
but my soul,
broken open and molded
on ancient memories,
sometimes hovers, flitting
like a Mariposa butterfly
sure of its way home.
Memory and soul grow together
shape-shifting my essence.
I am that child, that teenager,
now this adult,
the sum of all that went before,
yet changed in the melding
to a person neither the child
nor I could recognize
save the trove of memories,
cocoon to chrysalis to wings,
that change me in remembering.

Ellen Porter
4/3/07
Sr. Estelle Marie

Sr. Estelle, child sized
but grown in argument and will.
Ninety some years old
a mind rooted in events
of long ago.

She rides the passenger seat
on the way to the dentist
and reads aloud each sign we pass.
(She has often complained of
total blindness
but that isn’t the case with road signs today.)
Railroad crossing, deaf child,
Burch’s peaches, ripe and sweet.

When we arrive at the office
she refuses at first
to leave the security of the car.
I urge her along and she comes,
never timid, in her own time.

Inside we watch a mother
in the waiting room
tending her six year old daughter.
The child climbs into her mother’s lap
and is enfolded in gentle love.
Sr. Estelle watches closely and
then dares to take the chance.
“Would you like to hold me, too?”
Her dentures clack in a mouth
grown child small.

Ellen Porter
8/2/07
Undistracted

There is nothing pleasant
about living in the present moment
when all that moment holds is pain.

But it is not true that’s all there is.
Besides, there are dirty socks under the bed
and silvery cobwebs up in the corner
dangling sticky and secure.

Still, my attention cannot leave
the one thing—
pain—
pulling me from a kindly dream.

What could have prevented the present concentration
allowing my mind to wander
to meander beyond the
cocoon of my body
the yellow ocher of these walls?

And then
all of it
the pain and socks and cobwebs
even the pinpoint focus of the present moment
first precludes and then yields
the anatomy of a poem.

2007-12-24T05:43:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/11/07
The New Cosmology

These days of prescribed education
allow me no time for solitude out of doors.
Cancer and shattered breath leave me napping
rather than hiking the woods.

I wonder how I am to learn
if there is no mud on my shoes or
leaves, abandoned haphazardly from
trees along the hermitage path
in the curls of my hair.
How can I learn without birdsong
or the quick sighting of rabbits,
whiskers twitching in anticipation
of what, I do not know?

The lecturer speaks of adapting
religious thinking to the new cosmology.
Her ideas make my heart quicken,
and I wonder how I can reach forward and adapt
if I am enclosed in this particular room
away from the new fertile cosmos.
I feel arteries excited, running amok
with wonderful, terrible, glacial ideas.
But how will they stay in my heart and my memory
even another day
unanchored by dirt and grass and the new sap rising?

Ellen Porter
6/14/07
Community Retreat

The monastery is
chiseled away by
lectio and prayer.
There are no visitors this week
hospitality exchanged
for quiet vigilance.
The monastics
like a river
meandering the halls
In silence.

Ellen Porter
7/6/07
Grace

A circle of women
powerful drums and fire.
One sets the rhythm
hollow and deep.
Others echo
one by one
magnifying in night air.

This circle
sixteen strong:
two crones
bringing ancient energy,
thirteen middle years
solid, honest, honed true,
and a four year old
uprooting spring.

It is the child’s initiation
into the woman’s world.
She doesn’t know that
as she leans against her mother,
crawls in grass
inspecting blade by green blade,
as she attempts to join
the rhythm of the group,
she doesn’t know
she is being taught
the circle’s wisdom.

Her mother worries
she will disturb.
Her grandmother
takes her on her lap
counting out the drum beats
the child imitating rhythm.
The others smile
accepting as a whole heart
the healing that
this evening brings:
this surprising vernal grace.

Ellen Porter
8/16/07
Losses

This spring, when I first rose early
to embrace the great poets,
their words so comfortable on the page,
and to test my own ink,
I didn’t know that with the summer dawn
the morning bird would no longer sing.
I had grown fond of that song, expectant,
but it took me days to realize its absence.

Yesterday, my sister announced
her difficult epiphany:
she will leave Lake Erie and
return with leaf brilliance
to Pacific places, west and north.
With her going,
she will gain eyes to watch
her granddaughter move
from four to five
and the child’s parents
growing gradually, patiently,
into adulthood.

And in this house
an artist is dying.
I try to remove myself—
his diminishment echoing
my own disease—
my cowardice begging solitude.

Of all these losses—
spring dying to summer,
my sister’s westward magnet,
the potter’s final breaths—
it is the missing birdsong
that breaks my heart.

Ellen Porter
6/4/07
Psalm in Darkness

My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will
the earth soul shine?

Day after day
I spar against the enemy.
I drench my shirts with sweat.
My eyes unfocus
with a faintness so close
I kneel down in homage
to the darkness.
My breath comes in panicked gulps;
my fluids burst, unbidden.

My spirit shudders
in deep darkness;
when will the earth soul shine?

Today I rise late
And miss the morning bird song.
The sun has outrun me to the horizon.
Trees leafed out
but plastic bags
littering their branches.

Perhaps the earth soul shines
and I have missed it,
my spirit grasped by
the crook of my arm
still sleeping?

Ellen Porter
8/27/07
Sometimes After Death

Sometimes death sets
the dark world spinning,
a catalyst.
Your body, blest and forgiven
just settling under
fresh turned, pungent dirt.

I thought it was finished,
that dark pod of
fear and sorrow.
But as you settle in the ground
new darkness fills
your empty hollow.

Now I cannot breathe earth’s atmosphere
but must settle for tanks of processed air.
And even then,
as I rise from my bed
I gasp like one following closely
on your silent heels.

And the sentinel pine,
struck by lighting
in yesterday’s storm,
left leaning,
its life or death
waiting decision
by one who understands
the anatomy of a tree,
but who never loved this particular pine
as I have.

And the friend whose
birthday we feted tonight
with singing, laughter, wine and candles.
Did she feel the darkness settle
where your chair should have been
pulled up at table?

Ellen Porter
8/4/07
The Snake and Condescension

Late spring and
acting like summer
the trail by the creek
stretches dusty dry and
cougar ready.

But today I choose the upper way
the slope steep enough to
test my legs and breath.

Suddenly,
halfway up the ridge
there is the death rattle
of a snake
black as cooled embers
waiting on the trail.

I jump back
some ancient guttural sound
of disgust and fear
issuing deep in my throat.
And then the moment of paralysis:
I watch its wicked eyes,
it waits to fathom its future.

Aloud, but quietly, I pray
to mother earth
to let her creature
give me passage.
We wait, and then
proud but forgiving
the rattlesnake uncoils
and slips into the
fragrance of white sage.

2007-12-17T06:20:00.000-05:00

Ellen Porter
8/20/07
A Death in the House

A death in the house
turns familiar curves and halls akimbo.
The walls, leaning against the vacuum space
where a breathing man had lain,
nearly touch the floor,
unresisted by his expirations.

I do not recognize the play of light,
the whisper of heated air
finding secret entrance
into unfamiliar space.

I do not recognize myself
in this new environment,
no longer have your eyes to mirror mine.
I set out on reconnaissance
to redefine, to rediscover who I am
in your awful absence.

Ellen Porter
4/9/07
Colors and Words

Across a widening horizon
a country apart
you call to see
how I am dying.
Slowly,
I answer,
with ample time
for poetry.
You say
you are retired now
and spend your days
painting in new and vivid design.
Each of us
with graced and empty time
tend unseasonable joy
on days we
lay down metaphor or oils.

Ellen Porter
8/19/2007
Global Warming

The warm darkness of summer
Pennsylvania nights
makes complacent the cold shadows
of other places, made in mystery,
sustained, though barely, through neglect.
The polar ice cap
slipping away like snow under
the faucet of childhood alleys.

The warm darkness of unguarded ozone
melting away the icy sheets
deep and death-dealing;
the romping home of polar bears
left swimming, left catching the sleek,
benevolent bodies of walrus and seal
and no place left to haul out
and make a feast.

Ellen Porter
6/5/07
Lagoon

Sharing the lagoon
swimming with a snapping turtle
I slowly back away.
It paddles my direction
its neck extended
threatening with thick sharp beak.
I wonder what lunch
It thinks I am.
My toes grow muddy
beneath me as
I climb the slippery bank
and remove myself
as terrapin cuisine.

Ellen Porter
7/16/07
I Remember Only One Thing

Fifty years ago I was seven, not precocious but freshly shining with a child’s pure and gracious wisdom. From California to Nebraska we drove through elk and buffalo herds, through a migration of desert terrapin stretching the golden range to the sweet unending boundaries east and west. We reached my father’s home, his parents, his closely guarded history. I opened my eyes and saw. I remember only one thing about my grandpa. It is a genuine memory and not a tale told down through the generations. There is no story here to tell but only a still life, black and white. I am standing on the sidewalk at dusk looking back at the white-washed boards of my grandparents’ house. Grandpa opens the door and steps into the wind of the front porch. I see a strong gust snatch his hat, round and brown with curving brim. And it sailed through the dusty air and he ran after it, catching up to it on the green and brittle grass. That is all I remember of grandpa alive.

Two years later I saw him dead, laid out in the gladiola-sweetened air of the front parlor. My mother has told me the story so it is not my own memory save the fragrance of funeral flowers. My grandma snatched me from my mother’s side, lifted me coffin- high and ordered me to see my grandpa—no hat, no pipe, no cribbage deck—I did not recognize him. And my mother never forgave my brief abduction. After the burial, before the dawn, we climbed into the car and went in search of new life stretching across the prairies, death absorbed until it was invisible until I remembered only the herds and the hat careening in the wind.

Ellen Porter
6/30/07
Small in Body

She read it in the paper
“the diminutive Sr. Mary.”
She fluffed up like a baby wren
to full stature and demanded
what does that mean?
It means you’re short
I reassured her.
Oh, and she relaxed
back to normal size.

Small in body
compassion overflowing
she keeps the soup kitchen running.
Everyone who arrives hungry
leaves with satisfied belly.
Table by table she visits
with the guests.
They count on her love
and love her in return.

One evening,
hot and humid,
leaving everyone irritable
two of the men started arguing.
Their voices got loud, their fists clenched.
They were ready to fight.
Sr. Mary stepped between them,
each man twice her size.
She scolded them with no condescension.
The fists relaxed, the men stood apart.
Three people converted.

Ellen Porter
7/25/07
The Sentinel

I have not dared to go see it yet,
since the storm,
the sentinel pine, towering, leaning,
sheltering the sunken garden.

So suddenly,
yesterday it was healthy
bearing cones, ornaments hanging,
brown and seeded from greening fingers.
And today it is dead, those seeds
its only hope of future generation.

The storm was unexpected
centered in this garden, in this home.
The lightening blackened a clock on the wall,
asserting its power, stopping time on edge.

But worse, striking, it burned through
the heart of the pine.
Branches hang loose
making it dangerous to lie beneath it,
staring into its shadows, its lights.

And what of the shade it offers;
what of the darkened corner of
garden where small animals
make their homes, their hunting grounds?
And, oh, the birds.