Neil Ellman

 Erasing the Past

(after the painting by Larry Rivers)

It’s not as if

the end of a pencil

can erase

what has been

the past

written in ink

in a firm hand

on vellum’s time

remnants remain

fragments

of another life

other lives

indelible images

carved in stone

the past is what

it is, always was

will always be

enduring

without the hand

of man.

Shadow with Pelvis and Moon

(after the painting by Georgia O’Keeffe)

The moon casts a shadow

of bone

where the pronghorn grazed

and died

death flies, resurrected

on desert winds

from a raven’s nest—

red sun, red ghost

spreads its shadow

on the copper hills.

Dadaville

(after the painting by Max Ernst)

No one lives here anymore

where nothing happened or ever will.

The trains stopped running

when the people fled.

They left nothing of themselves.

There are no pictures on the walls

nothing of art or poetry

nothing on the cupboard shelves.

The rooms are filled with dust

suspended in the air

like dissipated stars.

The furniture was burned for fire

before the end.

So, too, the books.

Here and there a light bulb hangs

lifeless from a cord.

They left nothing when they disappeared

into the cracks between the boards

with neither signs nor testaments

to say that they were ever here.

CP

Neil Ellman has published numerous poems in print and online journals, anthologies and chapbooks throughout the world. Many of them are ekphrastic and based on works of modern art. When he retired from public education, he found the time and a method to combine his love of poetry and art.