The neighbour’s children are having a party

            their garden rings with energy and song

                        the laughter rises

filling balloons

 

Haunted by a hint

            of a dream

memory of a time

            of harmony and spaces

a time of glimpsing the face

            behind the world

the face at the end of all searching

            a time of laughter and love

of freedom and flow

            when life demanded to be lived and

I was sometimes lost in rapture

 

I am lost now

in memory's maze

wandering, wondering, thinking back

on it all, gazing out of the window

 

where a child's balloon is hovering

            deflating, shrinking

falling back into my neighbour's garden, 

            crumpled and finished

 

but look

            she is adding fresh gas, a tighter string

the children laugh and shout and the

            balloon is living again

 

There it is, bobbing outside the window

            with its stupid plastic grin

Daring me to be miserable

            Scolding the looking back

                        Insisting the energy is there

 

Can I believe it?

            Can I believe in a balloon?