after Marc Chagall’s watercolor, 1917

A white lie, perhaps, to say there is no ground,
and to say it in blue after blue
likely another untruth, multiplied by swirl
after swirl. Chagall’s artist backstrokes through blue
to an unseen moon, his fingertips the brushes,
and it feels like truth, this underwater art,
this shimmery misalignment of earth and sky—
the globed world a mere clinging cluster
of rooftops, loosely curtained in black and white,
spidery chains of vining leaf and stem and bloom.

                         I look away from these lies,
this skewed universe where the artist spins and loops
but never lands. I look away to the anchor of October
lawn, where circles of leaves lift me away to roll
and tumble west to east, tugging wave and wind along
like little sleds.

                         Whom does it hurt, really,
in the end, to whitewash the saw-toothed truth
in blue, to tell it like this, lie after rollicking lie.