© roy ballard 2012


Field of dreams
As evening lets its fragrant shadows slip
beneath the cedar where we laugh and sip
the ghost of a player comes out from the corn
and asks in a low voice
'Is this heaven'.

I was there once
among the evening sun and the pine cones
picnicking on champagne and friendship.
Seven ballons passed:
one was all green diamonds;
another shot with rainbows, bubble blown;
one precious amber, glowing in the sun;
a cardinal came next in crimson silk;
a dark one, witchlike;
then one in navy-grey, no colour at all
and one in every kind of blue:
acid-blue, azure-blue, basic-blue, brilliant-blue,
Cambridge-, litmus-, navy-, prussian-, rhodanile-,
ultramarine-, xylenol-, xylidyl-,
deep sea-, south sea-, shallow sea, wine-dark sea-,
Oxford-blue and rook-black-ultra-blue...
to name but a few.
You could not tell where one blue stopped and another started.
They all laughed, these balloons, as they passed
and we all laughed back.
The owls and the sheep laughed too
and even the silver satellite
who had gone up far too high
and was no longer in this world.
A thousand heavens of the evening passed
unmarked, like strangers, all unknown,.
They left unrecognised, alas, alas,
wrapped in a moment each and quickly gone.