Six Balloons
They came from the east. Flattened rounds,
tambourines, but pawn black,
silver streamers trailing from their valves,
lollipops, against cloud
sheen, six came like fighters,
were five, climbed, formed a V, a
Libra, W, Cassiopeia,
then passed. I looked away, typed a
note in the iPhone’s commonplace book,
someone else filmed it on his,
our mediation mediated,
the thing itself, there, looked
at through another thing, and then
when I looked again all were gone
to Coulsdon Town or nowhere, along
with each connotation I’d witnessed in them
or had endowed them with. I cursed,
wished I’d stared harder, sucked
them straight into brain through pupils. But
that might’ve proved them less, or worse.
Paul Connolly’s poetry has appeared in Agenda, Poetry Salzburg Review, The Warwick Review, The Reader, The Journal, Scintilla, Canada Quarterly, and The Dawntreader. He was shortlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize and came third in the Magna Carta Poetry Competition.