“Balloon Launch”

In a few recent posts, I have commented that visitors to One Autism Mom’s Notes, a blog written by my wife Pam, would discover that it presents clear, concise prose observations and commentaries frequently complementary to the matters or details viewed in many of my works of poetry. Indeed, Pam’s observations and perceptive points of view especially seem to mirror those pieces of poetry contained in the new sequence, Autism: A Poem, an ongoing experiment of a work in progress that I have been sharing with readers.

Pam nicely describes in her current blog entry, “Balloons,” a visit to watch hot air balloons that has become a family event every early September during an annual festival in Valparaiso, and this activity has always been something particularly anticipated as a bright moment by our son Alex, who has attended each year since his birth.

As Pam mentions, we most often attend the nighttime balloon glows because of their beauty and because gusty wind currents are unpredictable in northern Indiana, making actual daylight launches less frequent occasions and increasing the possibility of disappointment. However, on the rare days when winds are nearly calm, we’ve witnessed the balloons launch, float over the countryside, diminish in the distance, and disappear beyond the horizon.

Coincidentally, Pam has not been aware that a current poem I have been composing, “Balloon Launch,” also features this pleasant family tradition, reflecting tranquil moments of hope and illumination represented by those brightly colored balloons we’ve sometimes seen soar directly over our heads. Therefore, I invite her and everyone else to read this poem as a companion piece to her splendid prose entry.