Neil Ellman - Three Poems

The Man Who Flew into His Own Picture

 

(Ilya Kabakov, room installation)

 

The man who flew into his own picture

became anything but himself

or the thing he most wanted to be

with the face he most wanted to have

 

he became an eagle with serrated wings

as broad as his ambition

and just as bleak

a carpenter ant, a mite,

a spider crawling across the moon

as if it had a destination or a home

and then a serpent

with a flaring tongue

in words not even he could understand—

 

and then was turned to shattered glass

with every shard another face

and none of them his own

or the one he wanted most. 

 

 

Portrait of the Equilibrist

 

(Paul Klee, painting)

 

He who walks the braided rope

between the this and that

of yesterdays stretched

from here and now

to the when and if

of tomorrow without a net

 

juggles his days

(three, four, five at a time

as he crosses the breach below

one careful step, then another

with a sureness of foot

that bridges the ends of his time

 

the equilibrist knows the width

of his life in millimeters, years

and frays of hope

and the measureless depth

beneath his feet.

 

 

 

The Beautiful Bird Revealing the Unknown

to a Pair of Lovers

 

(Joan Miró, painting)

 

That the albatross knows the unknown

the way it senses in the blindness of a night

Its path along migration’s way

Is the miracle that guides its flight

 

that it reveals in dips and arcs

its skim above confounding waves

first lost behind a swell

then seen for an instant against the sky

Is the secret it concedes

 

to lovers lost themselves

wondering how the beautiful dark bird

with outstretched wings

can come and go so easily

between reality and belief

and know so much of undiscovered seas

 

 

 

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,100 poems in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and twice for Best of the Net.