Lost Balloonist
(After reading a biography of L. Frank Baum)
I wonder whether it was the siblings lost too young
or the window dressing magazines
that sparked the conflagration of the horror vacui
Or was it the notions that spirits fill up every space without an object
like the air in a balloon large enough to dare
taking a basket across Lake Michigan
Or the spirits that danced in his empty pockets
When he took up amateur photography
and laid forlorn on the sole grainy image of a nine year old niece
before the cholera took her
When he gutted the insides of his upbringing
Swearing it off in a gesture of theosophist grandeur
Did he still feel uneasy about the babies who died
in infancy unbaptized?
The worlds he made were cluttered with the brik-a-brak
of progress and the peril was always stunted
by the throughline of his surety
that he musn't scare the children
About the Author: Craig Phillips is a poet, songwriter and novelist who pays the bills as a high school English teacher.
Image Credit: Carol M. Highsmith “Hot Air Balloon Jubilee Festival, Decatur, Alabama” (2010) Public domain image courtesy of The Library of Congress
As It Ought To Be 