The Poetry of Ellipsis

What’s forgotten

And left unsaid

Defines a poem

Inside my head

Of the very purest kind

It's the poetry of ellipsis

Composed of words

That slipped away

Before I found the time

To scribble them down

But who can see and savor

What's on display inside
The museum of forgetting

Who can hear the holy bells

That peal without a sound

Or pay homage to the relics

Lost amidst the landscape

Of forever shifting clouds

*******************

Last night I spoke with Allan for the first time.  Actually, it wasn’t much of a conversation.  We stood on a mountain top.  Marissa was there too, standing off to the side.  I was looking down at a sea of clouds – a beautiful ever-changing field of display.  I noticed one cloud in particular that looked so painterly; strangely it was the cloud’s interior space that defined the image, while the cloud’s exterior served as the picture frame.  An image emerged within that was defined by the negative space, where the cloud gave way and we could see only blue sky.  It was shifting about, like a Keith Haring figure, dancing, arms and legs undulating to the rhythm of wind and sky; somehow it managed to be both a still life composed of the deep blue sky and yet fully animated as the cloud continually transformed.

I wanted to point out this masterpiece to Allan, hoping to impress him with my artistic sensibility.  But I found myself tongue-tied.  I couldn’t remember Keith Haring’s name.  All I could come up with was Jean-Michel Basquiat and then, while I struggled with name recall, the image altogether disappeared.  And then I woke up and wrote this poem.  What's forgotten/ and left unsaid/ defines a poem/ inside my head ...

  (For those of you wondering who Allan is – he was my wife’s first husband, a brilliant artist I never had the chance to meet.  Marissa and I are now working on a podcast to tell the story of Allan and the Apology Line, the conceptual art project that was the masterwork to which he devoted the last 15 years of his life.  You can read more about Allan and his work  on my Apology Line blog.)