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Aug 12 2014


Balloons festoon
a festive sky,

a riot of colour

in effortless flight.

They hover at various heights,

bobbing up and down

like the notes

of a calliope.
And the burners’ percussive rush

are unexpected drum-rolls.

Deep wicker gondolas
are lightly suspended,
tiny people
peering over their edges.
Like a sewing basket
in a corny postcard,
a clutch of kittens
poking out.

They drift together
on the same desultory breeze,

a motley procession
of lighter-than-air machines.
At the pleasure
of wind.

They seem improbable
in the clear summer light,
so big
so insubstantial.

An illusion of ease
despite the hazards abounding,
from high-tension lines
to uncontrolled landings.

An illusion of ease
you could only believe
not seeing them grounded.
Choreographed men,

hauling hard

to get them standing.
Flaccid balloons, and heavy baskets
the staccato roar
of propane gas.

A single errant blast,

and it’s up

in flames. 

I can't explain this poem except to say that I sat down to write, nothing in mind, and this image a ballooning festival inexplicably appeared: a high blue sky, filled with multi-coloured hot air balloons. So I decided to go with it, and this is where it went.

I needed more than straight description, and so the idea of deconstructing this illusion of ease -- of weightlessness, effortlessness, and sheer whimsy -- with hard reality; of closing the distance. The poem sets up expectations, and then works against them. It starts with the circus calliope, the beautiful wicker basket, the cute kittens, the pleasure of wind. And ends with hard work and near-death.

From the very beginning, I wasn't sure if there was anywhere to go with this, or if it was worth going. But once I hit on that circus calliope, I couldn't bear to abandon it! I love the conflation of sound with sight. And I love how that single word alone -- "calliope" -- evokes everything about the scene: the colour, the whimsy, the leisurely pleasures of a summer weekend.

Perhaps the reason for this turn can be found in a mental image that dogged me from the initial lines. It's the opening scene of a recent movie (Enduring Love – thanks, Google!), and sets into motion everything that follows: a shot of people falling from a hot air balloon on a bucolic summer day. It's not just the abrupt change from innocent joy to deadly serious, but the sudden intrusion of gravity and height into a scene of airy weightlessness. The movie sets up an illusion, and then violently breaks it. I think the poem works much the same.

My favourite line is something very simple and obvious, so I'm not quite sure why I respond to it each time I re-read. It's at the pleasure/ of wind. I think it's because I like the push and pull of "pleasure": the word obviously reinforces the pleasant bucolic scene; but "at the pleasure" also contains a hint of darkness in its allusion to fatalism and contingency and arbitrary forces beyond our control.