There’s a sorrow

that comes from recognizing

you’re not too tightly tethered

to the world,


that if someone asked

what’s keeping you

all you could be is quiet

and pensive,


sitting on the porch

with a couple of friends

who are good at interpreting

the shapes of clouds.


You can’t feel how fast you’re going here.

Obligations

are a form of gravity.

The truely free

are thrown off,


sparks

from a grinding wheel.

Sometimes very little

keeps us:


a phrase, a misunderstanding

of our worth, or lack of it,

a thirst for symmetry

or music that might say

something

we thought was a solution,

or the love of our regrets.


But mostly we remain,

light as rising balloons

that inspire neither questions

or answers as they float

away from what held them,


obligated only to the indifference

of physics few would be so callous

as to explain at the moment

we disappear from sight.