Neil Ellman- Three Poems

It Was All a Dream

(Wangechi Mutu, mixed media painting)

As we were told from the pulpit

so many times

it was there for the taking

like a ripe apple

having fallen to the ground.

Here at the mountain top

where the sermons were said

our lives should begin

as if they had never been lived

now, in the first day

of a heaven on earth.

It was all a dream, of course:

freedom from the hunting dogs  

chasing us up a tree,

the whip, the ball and chain—

all illusion and nothing more

than slavery of another kind.

The Witnesses

(Wilfredo Lam, painting)

Witness the birth of a galaxy

light years away

as if it we were our child.

Witness its change from infancy

to maturity

and to its death in fire.

To be witness to the end  

and know how we will end

Is recompense enough.

We Are Waiting

(Wilfredo Lam, painting)

for the train to Ainilam on Orion’s Belt

for a missive from the Monarch of utopia

for the second coming of the second word

for phoenix resurrected as an odalisque

for Quetzalcoatl to fly above the pyramids

for a dinner for two in Valhalla’s hall

for the birth of a goddess rising from a clam

for peace, honor and eternity  

for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow now.

Neil Ellman, a poet from New Jersey, has published more than 1,150 poems, many of them ekphrastic, 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.