Neil Ellman- Three Poems

Sounds at Night

(after the painting by Adolph Gottlieb)

With a black cat’s shape

in a black cat’s night

it can still be felt

a spider crawling

on the skin

a shadow

passing through the walls

its wake

barely perceptible

like the pull of stars

but it can still be heard

scratching on the air

soft words

whispered in my ear

as if it were alive.

Trees

(after the painting by Joan Mitchell)

Not of a place or time

nor with the hard wood of reality

there are trees that grow

anywhere they wish

on barren, idle ground

and in consecrated stands

a consequence of mind

they can take any shape

have any color they will—

blue elms like soldiers in a row

against an obdurate sky;

red and yellow ash

fleeling from the wind;

some soft, leafless, reaching

for the sun;

others stiff, gray and resolute

like statues carved in stone—

there are trees that take

impossible shapes

and some of them are real.

Two Reasons Birds Sing

(after the screenprint by Robert Rauschenberg)

If for no other reasons

birds sing because they can

and must.

It is not as if they have a choice

to roar, grunt, maw, neigh

pant-hoot and bray

at the moon like mules;

or like machines, grind

hum, bubble, kreen and whir

and chugga chugga chug

to their potential mates.

All they can do is sing    

churree churree churee

tsweet tsweet tsweet

po-heet and cuckoo

every hour on the hour

of every day

as if they were a clock.

And they sing, of course,

because they must

for reasons of their own.

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net and the Rhysling Award.  Close to 1000 of his poems, many of which are ekphrastic and written in response to works of modern and contemporary art, appear in print and online journal, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world.