Balloon floats with brown leather
Feet on the zocalo. Inflatable television
Characters with ancient people
On a string.

Then in a puff of wind one woman
Rises from the cobblestones and
Soon is looking down on tingas
And chimichangas, Franny’s bench
And Germans. High above hotel lobby
Folk dancing and out past city limits
Across Indian land toward a sky
Darker than mole sauce.

I can see Orion’s Belt on Bob’s
Sponge pants and a cat’s paw
Cloud just missed good old Daffy
Duck to lie across
A lollygagging moon.

And the woman cuts her strings
To float free in the Azteca,
Zacateca, Iroquois, Chippewa,
Yaruma, Tarahumara
Taino, Arapahoe heavens
To see if
The moon’s a balloon
And the Great Spirit but
A puff
Of wind.