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Robert Earl Stewart

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House Balloons

They’ve been hanging around the house
for eighteen days now.

I’ve personally dispatched half-a-dozen
others, breaking them into primary-coloured
skin in my hands.

The birthday is long over,
but these two have taken up residence.

Wraiths riding unaccounted-for
jet streams through our rooms,
Their pace creepy, directionless
in their ability to end up in the narrows
of the kitchen, about to wash a glass

Lolling up next to me as I write
Outsized heads, lozenges of foil –
looking better suited for the depths
of the oceans, flashing things on the verge
of collapse

Flagella of yellow ribbon
Trailing like benign whips –

Yet they are upstairs, here,
existing at eye level, helium deprived,
incognito as our son’s most beloved
cartoon idols, where an hour ago one was
looking out the front window, the other –
the one we call Arthur –
was wrestling with the cat
having been attacked at the piano,
mid-Glass interpretation.

You broke the silence last night,
giving words to exactly what I’d been thinking
as we watched the other one sail in steps
up the stairs, after a long day of
learning how to live.

And I just caught them in
flagrante delicto in the sun room
Pulsing around each other like lava in a lamp.

And it makes me wonder –
why us, and how long
will they stay?

Robert Earl Stewart lives at Windsor, Ontario, and works as a news reporter and photographer for a large Canadian daily. His work has appeared in various magazines in Canada and internationally.

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