A Balloon Steals My Worries.

"Swishing on by" by JancyLi

(Today I thought of balloons after seeing this picture goes swishing on by...)

The Balloon

I went to the park

And I bought a balloon.

It sailed through the sky

Like a large orange moon.

It bumped and it fluttered

And swam with the clouds.

Small birds flew around it

In high chirping crowds.

It bounced and it balanced

And bowed with the breeze.

It skimmed past the leaves

On the top of the trees.

And then as the day

Started turning to night

I gave a short jump

And I held the string tight

And home we all sailed

Through the darkening sky

The orange balloon, the small birds

And I.

- Karla Kuskin (adapted by James W. King)


I was sad
I went to the park
I saw a balloon floating
- Away with my worries.

- Ghostwise


“Nobody can be uncheered with a balloon”

- Winnie the Pooh

The Dragonfly With Its Million Eyes.

(As I alighted from my car, I thought about the Butterfly post I wrote last night. I don't know why it made me think of dragonfly. Surprisingly and coincidentally, I saw a dying dragonfly lying in front of my office. It was still twitching. Seeing it like that made me sad.)

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly
Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky.

- Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Silent Noon


I once saw hundreds of dragonflies hovering over me on a promontory jutting out into the ocean in Southern China. Until that day, I thought the mass of dragonflies pictured in Japanese cartoons are works of fiction for I had never seen so many before with my own eyes.

- Ghostwise

~~~~~~~~~~"

This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened.

- Ziggy Marley


He saw me with a million eyes.

- Ghostwise

Sunset On A Long Boat.

(You can watch a sunset from a hill, from the plain or from the shore and the sensations are all different. But my favorite view of the setting sun is while adrift on a boat with nothing between me and the sinking sun. I had that opportunity again two days ago just after a timely rain cleared the air for the sun to display its full brilliance.)

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon

Like a magician extended his golden want o'er the landscape;

Trinkling vapors arose; and sky and water and forest

Seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline

Drifting on a long boat as the sky and sea burns, you do not witness a sunset, you are part of it.

- Ghostwise

~~~~~~~~~~"

After a day of cloud and wind and rain

Sometimes the setting sun breaks out again,

And touching all the darksome woods with light,

Smiles on the fields until they laugh and sing,

Then like a ruby from the horizon's ring,

Drops down into the night.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hanging of the Crane

On the day you witness a setting sun, the night always appear a little kinder.

- Ghostwise