I’ve been thinking about ballast a good deal lately
I push things over the edge of my basket,
haphazardly at first, and then slowly, orderly
trying to
rise higher

There is no
danger of crashing,
but  keeping the sandbags
aboard my airship
will not let me clear
the coming verdant forest,
or that range of mountains
beckoning in the distance.

They may be only bags of sand,
that I scatter over the patchwork
of farms and dusk and cities
a rain of ash and soil and time

but each grain formed
as it filled the container
each one earned,
each an honor or a burden
or a burden of honor
tiny pressing battalion,
leaving behind an empty bag
scarred and fashioned by the contents
of the past.

I will refill them
in the future,
new grains will fall
into old spaces,
until they fill the shape
of the old
and then,
and then,
they will finally change the shape of all I carry
just as my dismissal of the old changes my course

No sense of charting the future
in a balloon
I can only make ready
for the winds to arrive
those capricious sky currents

As an explorer,
I know when it’s time to secure the ropes,
cinch the leather straps,
and open the flame to roaring full.

I rise
I fly