Valentine’s Afternoon

Four lanes over, a plump helium heart—

slipped, maybe, from some kid’s wrist               

or a rushed lover's empty front seat

through a half-cracked car window—

rises like a shiny purple cloudlet

toward today’s gray mess of clouds,

trailing its gold ribbon like lightning

that will never strike anything

or anyone here on the forsaken ground,

its bold LOVE increasingly illegible

as it ascends over the frozen oaks,

riding swift currents toward the horizon,

a swollen word wobbling out of sight.