America Windows, by Laurence Musgrove

America Windows, by Marc Chagall (France, b. Belarus) 1977

America Windows
 
Chagall’s bicentennial glass
thanked in blue our country
near fifty years ago in panels
glowing here in Gallery 144,
a long, dark, recessed room
in Chicago’s Institute of Art.
Spread across three windows
and six blue pages, he raised
in joy the freedoms of music,
art, words, drama, and dance
above a jagged city, people
in pain, asleep in their beds.
But look in the middle glass!
A dreamer awakens, holds up
her pen like Liberty, writes
in moonlight page after page,
sails on a ship, bird in a tree,
songs to a yellow sun shining.

Laurence Musgrove

This poem was first published in Vox Populi.
 
Laurence Musgrove is a professor of English at Angelo State University, where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. He is the author of four volumes of poetry: Local Bird (2015), The Bluebonnet Sutras (2019), A Stranger’s Heart (2023), and The Dogs of Alishan: Poems from Taiwan (2025). ​