Chagall Dreams

--Michael Magee

He is carrying his beloved Bella

above the village green, tilting

her sideways like the prow of a ship,

while he paints with the hooves

of a cow. Using the chimney steeple

as his nib, he writes down the hour.

A fish with wings flies by,

violins play with their own bows,

a pendulum clock is swinging above

the sun with the aura of a candle.

O, if you could hold it, encircling it all;

it’s a world you could put your arms around.

A gouache of never-ending sky,

sea urchins in trills, rising into the ether

where women grow like Russian nesting dolls

and roosters crow to their glowing wives,

while everyone sings to the windmill of nature

in notes only a poet or a lover could decipher.