Sailing Red

There is a particle
of dust, from the spring festival
just down the road
where even the air
is embraced with the creation stories,
that has traveled carefully
into my left eye.

I have furnished abundant tears,
watery losses enough for a lifetime of sorrow,
to wash the remnant of celebration
from my sight.

The music has drifted softly away.
The smells of animals and frying foods
disappeared with the nightly rain.
The foot traffic and movement of bodies
in their finery is gone,

but the dust remains
on the surface of the lens
and the view is marked oddly
by the color of a balloon
that sails beating red,
opaque and heart-like,
flowing silent past the almost full moon.