Fallen Star

Just one balloon, of all the rest
(perhaps it smelled the coffee
from the breakroom) and
fell to earth to slither out of sight.
For days, the other mylar stars and it
all shone against a sky marked off
in neat acoustic grids,
but wanting an adventure,
quite surprising everyone who'd seen
them hanging there, this singular balloon
emitted sighs, excited yet discreet.
and so began its slow descent to rest
upon the field of neat
looped carpeting below.
And somehow sniffing out a current,
soon it caught a wave of air
and rode it to the door and down the hall,
negotiating turns,
delighting everyone who saw it sweetly trav'ling on its way.
It must have stopped, a final gasp of helium,
before it came to rest
behind a shelf or underneath a chair,
but it had tasted freedom first.
How many stars can say the same,
how many have the courage
of celestial non-conformists
that are eager to escape the ancient orbits
of the-way-things-are, have-always-been,
to find out what is just outside their vision,
those universes of what-else-there-is?


(c) Ellen Gillette, 2016