Poem for Wednesday and Lincoln Park Beach

Anemone
By Jo Fisher

Callous fingers prodded and poked,
intent on exploring, testing limits
unprovoked,
each blind to the damage
done to the soft belly of this
curious beached creature,
whose centre,
once exposed to the world,
grew tenser;
curled and closed
in self-defence.

What did I expect, opening up like that?

But today,
I unfurl and bloom,
allowing the feelings to flood back over
spreading myself wide and free,
making room for you in me.

I let my insides out, anew,
tender tendrils unwrapped and stronger,
no longer trapped, neglected,
suppressed,
heart and guts and mess revealed and
my soul, undressed.

The tide has come back in again,
and your salt water heals the pain.

-------- 

We were supposed to get our new covid shots on Wednesday, but for the second time, our appointments were canceled (once Walgreens, once CVS, so it's clearly some kind of supply issue, not an administrative screw-up). So we had a quiet day, though the weather was lovely, high 60s and sunny with a breeze off the water and several hummingbirds visiting. I chatted with my high school friends in the morning and watched part of Endgame with Kristen after lunch. 

We took a walk to the beach to enjoy the weather in the late afternoon and I tried to submit a new Pokemon Go route (they keep rejecting my Pokestops). We did not have a great day rooting for baseball teams -- at least the Orioles aren't playing this round -- but at least they finished in time for The Masked Singer, which was having NFL night and plenty of ridiculousness, and afterwards we watched the first episode of this season's Quantum Leap. From the beach at Lincoln Park: