Poem for Wednesday and Ballard Animals

Blue Vase
By Cynthia Zarin

Because you like to sleep with curtains drawn,
        at dawn I rose and pulled the velvet tight.

You stirred, then set your hand back on my hip,
        the bed a ship in sleep’s doubled plunging

wave on wave, until as though a lighthouse
        beam had crossed the room: the vase between

the windows suddenly ablaze, a spirit,
        seized, inside its amethyst blue gaze.

What’s that? you said. A slip of light, untamed,
        had turned the vase into a crystal ball,

whose blue eye looked back at us, amazed, two
        sleepers startled in each other’s arms,

while day lapped at night’s extinguished edge,
        adrift between the past and future tense,

        a blue moon for an instant caught in its chipped
                 sapphire—love enduring, give or take.

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On Wednesday I returned to the dentist to get a crown on the tooth whose ancient filling was damaging the tooth beneath it. They make the crowns right in the office, which is convenient in that no one needs a temporary one, but it makes for a very long appointment, which would have been annoying had I not been able to chat with my three high school friends via Zoom while I was waiting and if the OFMD season 2 trailer had not dropped. I was afraid to eat anything before the appointment because being practically upside down and given anesthesia sometimes makes me nauseous, so I was also very hungry! We stopped at World Market on the way home to get various food items. 

I only wanted to eat mushy stuff for lunch (peanut butter & jelly and yogurt), then we watched some baseball -- not a good day for the Orioles, but the Mariners pulled out a win -- and walked to the beach in chilly, slightly damp afternoon weather. Our evening entertainment has been Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which isn't as good as Raiders or Last Crusade and doesn't even pass the Bechdel Test, but is still better than Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull, and that is really all I asked; plenty of nostalgic callbacks, Too Many Nazis, and a gimmick about on par with the supernatural in the other movies, no aliens. Animals we saw in Ballard Locks and the fish ladder: