A Kite

2007

A Kite

I wonder…
Now you are five,
Is it time to go kite-flying?

And, while I hold taut the string,
You might slip your bounds
And sky-wards soar:
to see such things above…beyond…
as when the kestrel
flicks the buoyant air with quivering wings;

to swoop and loop like summer’s
swifts and martins,
cutting the wind
for flitting insects;

or even dream of higher climes,
pillowed on a rolling cloud,
face turned up to an ungauzed sun,
drinking the heat
whilst, from your billowed feet,
in sleeting greys, the rain drifts down.

But
If kite-riding
Is too strange a scheme,
I hope you still
Will find the space:
Escape the same and ordinary things
And let your finer self
Lift at will on the wind’s spell.

Poems for Artemis