My kites respond faithfully to each tug of the string,
like pets on a leash. Sometimes, they wantonly resist
the pull, to crash-land on brush-covered hillside.
The strange, geometric delta champion, with black-and-white
checkers on its chest, rainbow wings and tail, flaps its fins
as a flying fish that floats higher and higher, into the azure.
The swirling circle, a tribute to the ingenuity of unknown
engineers, is an air turbine, turning so fast that it seems ready
to power a lightbulb or open a portal to another universe.
The green baby dragon with red wingtips and streamers
capriciously turns here and there. Unstable, garishly bright,
it falls suddenly onto a thicket of dry chaparral bushes.
The golden macaw, enormous and silent, is so different
from its loud, obnoxious cousins. My parrot blissfully swings
from left to right, in an ethereal waltz of gold and red ribbons.
The laughing dolphin soars straight up – I look up to follow
the pathway of this magnificent guardian of the world,
crossing the ocean of air, so alive in the oxygen blue.
Flying kites is defying gravity. Flying kites is pure joy.
This is freedom itself, soaring towards the Sun,
circling around the Moon, tracing patterns among clouds.
My favorite is the simple diamond of colorful squares
–red, yellow, green, blue, violet – that shines in sunlight,
twirling on the end of its string, pointing the way home.
We used to make such diamonds of thin balsa wood
sticks and light parchment paper, our hands stained by glue.
The tail, a row of paper bowties on a string, undulated
above dark soil of potato fields, stretching to the horizon.
Flying kites is an apology for years lost to not being
little children that skip along the path, straight to heaven.
Flying kites is prayer, supplication, hymn of praise.
Flying kites is like love making to the air –
a dance of give and take – moving, shifting along
air currents that swirl above the hills at sunset.
It is like swimming in the air, below a violet butterfly
with wings outstretched on its ascent to the Sun, along
the pillar of light that connects the Earth and the Sky.
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