The man dreams under the tree. Or is he dead. 

My students can never agree. How sealed is 

that scene. Peaceful but sealed and the birds 

are cut out. Their outlines remain but they 

have fled. How to be free. That is what 

the man dreams, folded arms, ankles crossed.

When I was a nanny, the girl and my hands 

smelled of the soap the family used. They 

always fed me and when I used that soap 

years later, her tiny cheeks returned to me, 

rising skyward on the swing. In the Chagall, 

the sky is smudged with blue and the poet 

seems to gaze upward, but his eyes are wells

of black that look inward at loss. If you don’t have 

someone in a time like that you don’t have family. 

Then you covered me in clean sheets. We watched 

La Strada together before we never talked again. 

You hummed along when the fool played his violin, 

and once in the dark you put your hand on my side 

to say, That’s old. It isn’t here now. There were no violins 

in my childhood school. My mom rented a trumpet 

for my brother and when it went unpaid someone 

knocked on the door and took it away. Everything 

has a purpose, says the fool, even this pebble. 

I never cried when I left home. But, my friend, 

for three years I cried if I said your name.