Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Balloons

Reposted for Miss Rumphius' back-to-school prompt.

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.

Collection available! Knocking from Inside

6 comments:

poefusion said...

beautiful.

Mark said...

Beautiful is a word I would certainly used to describe this.

Tamra said...

I love the contrast between the balloons rising and the children weighted down by their backpacks.

rbarenblat said...

I really like this poem -- the bright colors of the balloons and the backpacks, the contrast between the freedom of the pearl-grey sky and the closed-in-ness of the classroom, the way the poem's images repeat and juxtapose themselves in new ways.

Wayne Pitchko said...

I like the contrasts also....good one....

Wayne Pitchko said...

I like the contrasts also....good one....