Sunday afternoon. Time for a quick poem before I try cutting my own hair. Again. Wish me luck. A balloon was caught in the power lines as I drove home last night, its wilted siblings dangling beneath it like they know it's February. Wonder what happened to the kid holding them. Maybe he's still up there somewhere.

 

THE BALLOON STORY 

 

This happened, once, and we know it must be true:

A little boy at the park,

too greedy for just one,

demanded the balloon-man’s entire supply

so he could feel that masterly bunching in his hand,

the deliciousness of bounty, of more than he needed, of “all,”

a hank of twine as fat as any wrist

that made the dream of flying real inside his sticky hand.

And you all know what happens next; it made the evening news, the papers:

a sight-gag so perfectly hackneyed that,

when it finally happened in real life

and not on the screen of the mind or TV,

we all stood silent and watched him rise, even his parents,

watched the dark stain spread on the front of his pants,

heard him scream insults and demands like a fucking pasha

at his parents who stood and gaped, wedged between easy emotions,

and secretly envied him.

 

This is a poem.

That is the sky.

There is a boy with balloons in his hand.

The boy is in the sky

And the sky is in the poem.

 

Because of the peculiar design of our eyes,

we detect light more easily with our peripheral vision.

Look at the night sky,

full of stars your eye can only hint at

until you look just to the side, just off-center

at the implied, unfolding glory of the now-not-empty sky.

 

This is writing.

That is truth.

The map is not the territory

And directions are not the trip

And the sky is too large to see

And not a place for children.

Pointing is rude.

So is staring.

Put a little handle on the world and pick it up.

 

And when your balloon is turkey-fat,

tethered to meaning with its awkward string of metaphor

that you clutch, secret and shameful as a pink grade-school diary,

will you let it go, or will you careen skyward

like a pea-shooter missile shot at the hugest goddamn balloon ever

until your tiny sneakered feet finally twirl away

into specks on the surface of the biggest blue?

 

Put a string on it. Hang on.

Put a little handle on the world and pick it up.