This Is My Call for Apologies
Like seeing a hot air balloon.
It’s just like seeing a hot air balloon.
No helium or flame or 8 passenger basket.
No passengers possibly drinking champagne.
No pilot or ballast,
nor buoyancy, nor balloonist enthusiast
entering national contests.
No ballast, I cannot stress this
enough, no ballast,
no ballast, no ballast.
No science! No cause,
no one getting involved or getting the blues.
No weddings, engagements, company picnics
or a back yard party,
for who balloons
for a back yard party?
No one richer than me.
Nothing shaped like a monkey
or a chili pepper or a bee,
or a Volkswagen bug.
No brand loyalty.
No weddings!
No envelope roll-up,
not without help,
good help on the ground
is the most important thing.
No prior knowledge
of previous passengers,
a Duck, a Sheep and a Chicken,
nor knowledge of hot air.
No flat land to worry about,
no splash-n-dash or discreet pilots
or pilots having to act discreet,
only interfering with the hot air.
No jobs like that,
struggling to be all day out of the way.
No hot air.
Nothing in the way.
Copyright © 2015 by Amy Lingafelter. Used with permission of the author.
“Up close, local balloonists would launch from a field near where I used to work, and the science of ballooning and subculture of balloonists became very interesting to me. Like any good librarian in love with miscellany, I read obsessively. From afar, though, it just seems like there’s nothing to it.”
—Amy Lingafelter
Amy Lingafelter
Amy Lingafelter is one of three poets in the book New Poets, Short Books, Volume III, edited by Marvin Bell (Lost Horse Press, 2009). She is a high school librarian who works and lives in the Chicago area.