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August 2016
Ed Ruzicka
edzekezone@gmail.com
At 16 I was a Cubs fan from a Cubs family when I got drug to a “Dada & Surrealism” show at the Art Institute of Chicago.  Now my brother says, “ I live here and you go to the Institute way more than me.”  My book, “Engines of Belief” is an ekphrastic jubilee dedicated to Modern Art.  edrpoet.com 

The Color Of Labor

based on Marc Chagall's Madonna of the Village
Picture
This shtetl’s dreary lanes
spill out over a hillside
under the feet of a bride 
dressed in purest white and already 
cradling her infant in her arms.

The fiddler’s notes shape clouds,
and begin to turn the small feet of the bride.
In closets, husbands hunt for cloths 
to make their shoes shine.  Wives 
throw on their slips and gay dresses.

As the fiddler fiddles a tune 
they have all known since childhood,
couples slide out onto roads, twirl 
their chosen ones in their arms.

The groom himself, weightless as smoke,
arches above his bride and child.
Though we can not tell which doorway 
he has come from,  which dark window
this new father will stand in, 
we see how the groom’s clothing 
remains the brown of the village
a crowd of buildings where labor lasts  
long after the wedding and feast.​
​©2016 Ed Ruzicka
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