Poem for Thursday and Both Sides of the Space Needle

When We Were Gymnasts 

By Emily Ballou 

Remember when you turned cartwheels

in the schoolyard.

And danced down the length

of the fallen tree, four inches wide

that crossed the creek

one foot in front of the other

and pivoted into the leaves?

And somersaulted down the long green hill.

And bent over backwards to see the world inverted.

And bounced on the bed.

And twisted yourself into pretzels with supple ease.

And hung from your knees on the climbing frame

until your hair stood on end?

Do you remember how it felt, then

to tread the thin line of things

to spring into the air with nobody looking

to dangle from the branches of trees

to balance on one leg, in arabesque

to be without gravity?

To tumble and get up again. It never hurts. And do it all again.

And as you leapt off the swings

thudding down two feet in the dirt

the birds gave you perfect tens.

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It was almost 90 degrees on Thursday in the Seattle area, which would have been fine except that we discovered that when we try to run the living room and bedroom air conditioning units simultaneously, we keep tripping a circuit breaker and losing power to half the apartment. So we stuck to the living room, watching the women's gymnastics all-around at the Olympics, which was fantastic, while working on our computers, then we ate lunch and went for a walk with hats and sunblock to the beach, where the lake is supposed to be off limits due to high bacteria levels but apparently some people don't mind swimming in shit! 

We came home after greetings the frogs and turtles near the dock for the Orioles-Guardians game, which was objectively terrible. Then I had my usual Thursday night call with and others, after which we ate dinner and caught up with some more Olympics coverage. Now we're watching the third episode of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder on Netflix, which is quite enjoyable -- has a lot of the elements of a typical British murder village series but the violence is toned down and it's much more focused on women, especially young women. Here is Seattle from above and below the Space Needle last weekend: