Red Balloon Rising: A Poem for Saturday
There is a simplicity to Laurel Blossom’s “Red Balloon Rising” that I find strangely evocative. Perhaps it’s that we celebrated my daughter’s birthday this past week. When she was much younger part of our birthday preparations would be driving together to the party store to pick out colored balloons, watch the clerk fill them with helium, pull them carefully to the car, and stuff them in the hatchback. When we’d get home we’d pull them out from the car, watch as they jostled each other as we held them tightly by their strings and hurried them into the safety of the house. They were so lively, so animated, almost like friends coming to the birthday party.
Laurel’s poem reminds me of all this and more, as she paints a picture for her own child that the lost balloon is not lost but part of a larger dance where red balloons wave goodbye as they venture into a big, big sky.
Enjoy the poem and whatever it may evoke in you, and have a great weekend.
Red Balloon Rising
I tied it to your wrist
With a pretty pink bow, torn off
By the first little tug of wind.
I’m sorry.
I jumped to catch it, but not soon enough.
It darted away.
It still looked large and almost within reach.
Like a heart.
Watch, I said.
You squinted your little eyes.
The balloon looked happy, waving
Good-bye.
The sky is very high today, I said.
Red went black, a polka dot,
Then not. We watched it,
Even though we couldn’t
Spot it anymore at all.
Even after that.
Laurel Blossom, 2011
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