Poem at a greek pot

Dear Fonzie,

I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't get back to sleep.

In Keats's Ode to a Grecian Urn, the poet sighs that the boy in hot-pursed lips nearing his pursing love in the picture on the pot will not ever get his kiss but wins eternally-almost-fulfilled desire, which is better in some ways than getting what you want. He'll always like her. That's not nothing.

Similarly, last week I visited Teddy's museum's "whale and giant squid fight" mocked up that scared us all as children. You remember this... in the room under the big, blue whale. When I posted the photo I thought what should I write to you as a note for it and I thought of the Keats lines.

I wasn't sure how to feel because it is sad that the whale will never get that bite of sushi it is about to clamp down on and neither will the squid. Yet as Keats says about the vase,

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'