Poetry By Ellen White Rook

       Pete CC




Long light day

at the end
               my father stopped 
               swallowing
               but for years before
               his skin peeled 
               leaving ruddy patches
               my mother smeared
               with orange unguent
his limbs increasingly 
               contracted 
               towards a stiff heap
               angled awkward
               like driftwood piled
               on a harsh hot
               day for a midnight fire 
               his neck bent
               as if broken

my father stopped
               speaking
               last words
               extinguished
               thank you
               dear
he stopped looking
               at anything anyone else
               could see
               eyes still 
               deep forest dark
               red brown green
               flecked with gold

when he stopped
               breathing
               and was carried away
               in a black SUV 
               my brother followed
               to the crematorium
               afraid he would be mislaid
               between death
               and the ritual
               end

today I am making 
               a summer fire
               first the stone ring to enclose
               a base of branches then twigs 
               and crumpled paper
               in a pyramid
               an offering
               of smoke and light
               to the too-hot day
               beside the pyre
               a rusty pail of cool
               water 

I am thinking 
              about the unstoppable
              how a spark consumes
              dry things
              how water 
              swallows fire

there is gold 
               in the sun’s flicker
               through a net
               of leaves
there is gold
               under earth
               in a box 
               of ash

​



Blue
     on reading Eavan Boland


sweaty from the walk that started grey 
swarmed with damp risen from rain-shadowed road
and ended blazing
backlit trees dulled to black 
fluffed clouds stranded in ever deepening blue

on the blue couch I am happy reading
silent drapes move abruptly as if rattling
sun blinds the page just a little
so blue suffuses it as well

I am happy reading
as if sitting with my sister
borders invisible as night 
light and water resting
in my breathing
in my stars
in my blue

​



Ruins

I am so far from anywhere
yet alongside my walking
a low stone wall meanders
the kind to use up stumbling stones
too low to contain a sheep or cow
just tall enough to say 
this is the field I’ll plant someday
this is the edge of me

a dooryard runs violets out to the path 
drifts of round heart leaves
white with black freckles 
and the ordinary purple wave 
and I can smell lilacs before I see 
their dark panicles guarding the stone corner
where what used to be a house
has collapsed into its own foundation
weathered boards and knobless doors askew 
half-hidden by oak leaves and soil  
fine as dust but thick enough for weeds 
to grow and almost hide glass shards

they didn’t live here long
not long enough for anyone to build a road
or draw the small house on a map
or set their names in village history

a plain yellow butterfly
finds the honey scent of flowers 
and under waves of briars newly leaved 
I spy the raft roof of a chicken coop  
sinking into afternoon



​
​Ellen White Rook (she/her) is a poet and contemplative arts teacher living in upstate New York and southern Maine. Retired from a career in information technology, she now offers writing workshops and leads retreats that merge meditation, movement, and writing. Ellen is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts program at Lindenwood University. Her work has been published in New Verse News, Black Fork, New Note Poetry, The Banyan Review, Quibble, Trolley, and more. A collection of poems, Suspended, is forthcoming from Cathexis Northwest Press. Visit her website ellenwhiterook.com.