beyond Chagall, newly

Three sickle moons rise over a yellow chair.
Reeds whipped by wind beat the barns they grow beside,
A visible wind of grey chalk dust and blue,
A choking fog, dry, not cool or warm: color.

And only color, that cakes the fur of cats,
The slinking cats, each low to the ground to breathe,
Not choke in chalk, not cake their lungs by gasps
Of blue-grey wind that drives them to shuttered barns.

They squint for a gap, their noses to the ground,
Wanting some way inside, or under floor boards,
They crawl behind the bases of flogging reeds,
Circling the barn foundations, ever moonslit.