Zen Pessimism

A Balloon in a Child’s Hand

and, if it floats away,
there is a chance it will soar high, beyond
bird-Zen-masters,
until the balloon sinks, the truth
only experienced then, not
                                            among the nimbus,

smog, helicopters, 747 jumbo jets
but down, low, humbled … yet dreaming
the Myth

of Balloon into being, its self-
awareness, turned organic
like just another earthy animal, like a great
ape, a fiction teller extraordinaire,
                                                      the one,

for example, telling this fiction, a metaphor
(lie) of a puffed up

                         balloon,

and pop, the truth of shredded plastic,
a corpse of the balloon
is—but will be resurrected, yes,
forevermore—a seed
planted, grows into a balloon tree. Sorry, this,
and most fictions
cannot be, not
any kind of strings attached
to hold on to it, permanently,
as truth; but, in a well-leaped faith

balloons again, reborn, imagined right royal
instead of baby blue …

Why not? Sky’s the imagination, until
gravity is proven true
(despite our opinions about balloon transcendence),
a balloon is not a spirit, yet this type of
aggrandizement is often
believed, except by the child
who lost, un-storied, a wholly balloon.