In Loving Memory

 In loving memory of a lost friend 

FLYING WITH CHAGALL  

After Marc Chagall’s  Above the Town (1915)

Silently, cloudlessly, we fly

swimming, legs and arms over

roofs and fields and streetlamps.

We skate over and above a sky

of white, our breath trailing behind us,

around the leaves and their small voices,

like notes of a fiddle.

Oh how – how do you do

it, without falling or slipping

or landing on a green roof

and bruising it blue? No one asks,

but everyone wonders. They all

look into the sky canvas and squint,

and inwardly sigh all day, all night.

It is a dream which only you and I see.

And nobody else.

And nobody else.

© Nora Nadjarian

Published in   "All of Our Lives: An Anthology of Contemporary Jewish Writing  " (ed. Sarah Shapiro) Targum Press, 2009