VIRGINIA SHARKEY

Ocean You Are Dark Blue Today

Ocean III • Acrylic on Canvas, 26.5” x 86.5” • 2019

Ocean you are dark blue today,
because of the sky I guess,
though it’s only a porcelain tea cup pinky finger blue.

But this ocean blue of a particular Tuesday
glimpsed left speeding towards Rossi’s hardware
for three bags of gravel and four fender washers,

has the clean deep sound you hear
in the hollow gong of a cathedral bell,
the blue clang that lends the entire day

the weight of a two ton pick-up.
How heavy, ocean, your blue must be
stretched out for miles, balancing between continents

a blue made only of water and roofed by air
both having no color, like the flimsy word Tuesday
but which in gratitude has now been anchored.

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