September 2017
I am a poet from New Jersey, which says it all. I write poetry because, at my age, it is the only thing I can do that takes more than five minutes, because I can lock myself in my office and not confront an "audience" face-to-face (ask wife of 50 years), because I don't need the money, because my children think it's "quirky" and "special," and, most important, because I have to.
On the Edge of Knowing
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Foreseeing In a tomorrow that never was a yesterday of then I stand on the edge of the precipice jumping into no one knows east or west top or bottom whichever way the universe crumbles whichever way time evolves I am the never will of yesterday’s song— sing now, sing then, into the future sing a melody of the unheard sing until if ever the darkness comes. Forgetting Forget the notion the mythology of special provenance forget the philosophy that sets us apart from the common weeds that inhabit the gardens of our thoughts and the dreams that inhabit our minds when we sleep forget what we think we are so much less and so much more than the stars that forge a shape in the summer sky. Mattering No matter how many planets I have discovered circling belligerent stars how many moons orbiting and wobbling around their creators how many comets hugging their ellipses as if they had a destination on a journey home— we and they are still alone. Seeming Not what I seem what I mean to be less an insect than a man or something else other than the am that I am an ant too small an elephant too large the universe itself infinite but small a fish out of water a star out of synch a riddle, the sphinx nor how it was ever meant to be. Life Line Not like the river that flows to the sea knowing its nature in marshes, flats and a flood of debris the line on the palm of my hand leads somewhere but I’ll never know where and when it will end in an ocean of fathomless life or the shallows of the grave. |
©2017 Neil Ellman
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