Jelly Music

At the aquarium
we watch the jellyfish.
It's the end of the day
and tired, we have happened into
this oasis: dimmed lights and mood
music, delicate tinkling sounds.
From the tanks, a glowing.
The gleaming jellies—
parachutes, cocktail umbrellas—
float dreamily in currents.
We move closer, clasp
each other's hands.

Only two months ago
we decided to have a child
and right now I do not know
if a double-joined fertilized cell
drifts like these jellyfish
down the fallopian tube to my womb.
I have only just learned
of this six-day honeymoon
before implantation,
when the cell is one made of two, no more.
I watch the outlines dance before me.
They don't seem so much real
as magical, filled in by air.

Steam streaks the sheet-glass windows
that face the bay.
Outside, surf pounds into pylons,
the fogbank hovers.
If we were sea creatures, you and I,
what would we spawn?
It is growing dark and we are tired.
A bell sounds to mark the building’s closing.
In the gift shop, we buy the ethereal mood music.
To play before sleep, where we float
down, filtering dreams, swaying
on the crest of the wave.

{"Jelly Music" originally appeared in Pinyon, Number 11, Spring 2002, and is included in the chapbook Falling Dreams, Finishing Line Press, 2006}