How To Know When

November 2001

Ballast keeps balloons down.

Swift updrafts mean

to move it

upwards away:

child's physics.

Farther-up clouds

suffer similarly.

We are susceptible.

(I thought myself

a farmer perhaps.)

Stars

(which ballast each other)

sprinkle the night

with salt.

Nothing will grow there.

No one will call

to say, "now".

The rope offers a knot:

"This is where the knife goes".