Click photo above to hear call.

Dashing
Toward the Sun

Once, running with my kite,

I let out line, and it

became a shimmering dancer

dashing toward the sun.

Then, in a surge of wind,

it snapped the bond, broke free

and left me here behind

to know its short-lived beauty

only in my mind.

Now, living kites adorn

the branches of a tree.

One lifts into the sky,

soars there on tapered wings.

It banks and glides; it hovers.

Kites come and go; they rest

and fly and rest again,

complacent as the ripening

fruit, as out of reach.

Stealthily, I approach,

camera in my hand.

(Unseen, a lookout waits.)

A sudden screech, an instant

thicket of great wings—

bright bodies brush the sky

and vanish in the day.

Again, I've just the memory

of beauty flown away.
 

Copyright 1999 Marian Jane Dickinson