Up in the sky and not very high
maybe fifty
maybe
sixty feet at the top
is a puffed up green kite
that looks like a velvet snail
swollen like a parachute
big as a parachute
or a giant top
with strings like a parachute
hanging down to a guy below
with all the strings in his hand
grounded
yet looking like he’s hang gliding
from a velvet snail
without lifting up
He has created a silk edifice
that makes himself insignificant
in a way
as just part of
a green roof of air over him
with walls of string
a bouquet
with himself as the vase
Yet he is the water
that feeds the flower
that floats over
the gray bay
He is a balloon salesman
He sells air and beauty
The price is our attention
that he gives back to us
See how the green kite leads him along?
How he walks underneath it to keep it aloft?
like a giant captive bouquet of green beauty?
By night he is a chubby man
who eats fast food
But at sunset
he is a male Scheherazade
a slave to beauty
a hero floating in the sky
who worships
in an open air cathedral
of green silk
tied up
in spider webs
without leaving the ground
 Floyd Salas