the hum of vacuum tubes alight

Time for Reflection, originally uploaded by gurdonark.

I used to have the childhood fantasy of releasing a note attached to a helium balloon. Nowadays such maneuvers get discouraged, as fowl and fur-bearing friends find funny buoyant plastics un-funny.

In my childhood fantasy, though, the balloon would float far away, to be found by another child. A child in Denmark or some other remote foreign country. I'd get a letter from abroad, telling me who had found my marked balloon.

Nowadays I communicate with people far away with astonishing ease. If I do not speak their language, google assists me like some science fiction device. I no longer need (but rather miss) the crackling of vacuum tubes on my father's old short-wave in order to hear the
sounds of offshore radio.

When i write, i write in torrents, as if there is a wide, rocky shore to cross, and only the direction of a river into the void will help one float past the parched spaces.

When I daydream, though, my daydreams can be expansive silences/
Imagine a balloon, floating away with a note. imagine a postcard from Norway. Imagine an unmet friend, a confidence shared with a stranger. Imagine the sound of one balloon, descending.