Balloon

Helium will soon be too precious to put in balloons,

so I need to become one while it is still possible.

I shall wear an obvious, frivolous colour, probably yellow,

and my chief occupation will be bobbing - 

bob, bobbing along, like in the song.

I shall let go of boring stuff like gravity

and start afresh with a completely empty head.

I'll be a bubble that aspires to be a solitary cloud

that floats on high over daffodils and eagles' nests,

cathedral spires and swimming pools.  I shall not sing aloud.

I hope to listen to the music of the spheres.

I suppose, in the end, I shall lose height - brought down to earth

by a mishap with a bird's beak, or Christopher Robin's air gun.

There will be a disparaging epitaph:

She always was a massive waste of skin.