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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