The orange balloon pulled at the thin pink ribbon that tethered it to the green mailbox, the party done and nothing to celebrate.
The sun rose, lighting just the tops of tallest trees and I untied the child’s toy from its hitch, moved back into the clearing to let it go where it would with space to rise free of the branches of maples and poplars by the house.
There had been the barest whisper of wind on the banks beside the creek at first light and from there, the orange teardrop rose vertically, slipping gracefully through the bare limbs outside the back door, drifting north up behind the little white house on a gentle slant into rising sun–itself an orange ball with a blue planet tethered to it.
Fifty feet above the silver metal of the roof, invisible waves pushed down, tossed and jostled the thin rim of elemental air in the undertoe of the surging wave, lurching, twisting, uncertain which way to go–pulled, tossed, lifted and swirled, the ribbon traced the erratic scribble of an alien hand.
At 100 feet, the golden dot was released, let go from the hold of the chaotic swirl that bedeviled its rise, found hints of the persistent northerlies, still bobbing and lurching a little along what would be its final course southeast.
At 200 feet, the struggle calmed above the level of the upwind ridge, a barrier like a snow fence that drops winds down our valley like drifts, crazy, erratic and weak.
And at 250 feet the tiny speck of gold lifted above the rim of our hollow, into the sun, out of the turbulence, its tail gone stiff behind it, rushing with certainty, driven above the bowl that holds home by the great blow of arctic air pushed heavy down from Canada.
Then on, no wavering, no ripples, no looking back. And at the rim of the distant ridge, it cleared the treetops as I knew it would and disappeared.
