Red Balloon

Why I write
Why you tie a balloon to a string —
To stay. To be.
To hold onto something:
A string of words,
taut with grammar’s gravity;
pulling down the up of the soul;
keeping life, gently, to the place, and
in the shape
of a hand.
A red balloon:
urgent yet delicate —
and difficult to miss,
should I lose my language and drift,
lift,
sentence-less,
syntax-less,
into the open poem of the sky.