Friday, March 07, 2008

Balloons: Revision

A bunch of bright-colored balloons rises,
like a spray of October maple in the wind
silhouetted against the pearl-grey sky

of fall. Out of sight, around the corner
a string slipped from someone’s grasp and freed
a bunch of bright-colored balloons to rise

like firebirds above a clearing in a Russian
fairy-tale. The wind carries them away,
grey silhouettes lost against the sky.

Children weighed down by backpacks trudge
through leaf litter and faded hopscotch diagrams.
Summer's bright colors and hot air balloons rising

are gone into memory. Inside the schoolhouse,
dusty figures frieze the chalkboards
like white silhouettes against skies of grey slate.

At recess, desks sit lonely amid spilled glue
and discarded string. On the windy playground
bright-colored clothes balloon around children rising
on swings, silhouetted against the pearl-grey sky.

Revised from an earlier version that wasn't nearly as good. Raises the question: When is a villanelle not a villanelle? What do folks think?

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

3 comments:

Gemma Wiseman said...

Fascinating parallels here. Especially intrigued by the inclusion of "Russian fairy tale". That created a host of connections.

Just lovely!

Smiles and Light

Anonymous said...

I loved the words you chose to illustrate the empty schoolroom.

Answer to your question could be a short poem of 6 stanzas of 4 lines each and a final stanza of 3 lines with 3 rhymes throughout.

little wing writer said...

beautiful images with each passing line... i too was intrigued by the russian fairy tale..