Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

     The car was running nicely.  Sometimes it did that, he never knew why.  Sometimes it would pull away without fuss, run smoothly, accelerate on demand.  He always thought it might have something to do with the air, whether it was dry or moist, how it burned in the engine.  Perhaps it was something to do with resonance, whether a vibration had started and once started was resonating for ever after on a particular trip.  Today it was running smoothly, which meant that the driving was restful.

     It was particularly restful now.  He was out of Aylesbury and past Stone, on to the open road.  There was no traffic, and no hurry.  He drove smoothly on.

     He looked towards the north-west.  The ground dropped into a broad, well-defined valley, and rolled up again.  There was a village in there, prosperous houses dotted amongst the trees.

    The sun was setting over the village.  Although the sky above him was clear, over there were thin, stratified clouds, and the sunset was glorious.  The sun itself still hung above the horizon, a great glowing ball made fuzzy and remote by the thin high cloud, while streamers of the cloud stretched away to either side, lines of glowing red like embers against the darkening sky.  In the utter silence that the drone of the car made, it was very peaceful.

     In the clear sky above the sunset was another balloon.  Like the others over Tring, it was in silhouette, but unlike those it was an odd shape, cylindrical.  He supposed it was advertising something, but silhouetted as it was he could not see what. 

     From the car he could discern no movement.  Nor were there any sounds above those of the car and the road.  It was like walking slowly past a picture in a gallery, without stopping.

     He noticed a little spark of light from the bottom of the balloon.  So there was movement.  It lit again, and again went out. The tableau was still again.

     Then it started again.  This time it didn’t go out.  Instead it grew, a line of blue and white and yellow light, very bright in the twilight, creeping up the side of the black silhouetted cylinder.

     It blossomed.  There was no other word for it.  The flame grew in size and beauty as a flower does in time lapse photographs.  The bud of the balloon began to wither, die back and fold towards the flower of flame.

     Now he could see movement.  The whole exquisite assembly was sinking, slowly at first but then faster and faster towards the ground.  The flame engulfed the whole of the balloon and it began to plunge.  It disappeared from his view as he was forced to concentrate on the road, but he felt himself filled with exaltation as he drove on towards Thame.  He had never seen anything so beautiful.