(for Raymond R. Patterson, Blues poet, New York)

I followed my friends and their talking fathers, who held the great kites, the newspaper birds. They were made on cleared kitchen- tables and on bedroom floors: on stormy rain-spoilt evenings. The flying creatures grew from bamboo lengths, glue, balls of cord, and the 'rude paged' Sunday papers. We climbed to the top of Kilvey Hill, which was brightened by an October sun and a sky of unexpected blue. The cord reels were wound tight, like talons, to the kites; and the frilly tails hung like scraps from a carnival.

Beyond the quarries, by the stone remains of the Windmill, we set to work, voices blunted by the wind; the reels were unwound as we gauged the slackness. Then fathers and sons started to run; the kites followed, bumping on the field of grass; then some kites rose as others crashed (and some boys tumbled into laughs). A chorus of rustling flaps, as up they went, their tails alive in an air of excitement. Their cord lines were as taut as telephone wires, as they soared above us, taunting the clouds. They were tied to each pull, our careful coaxing. A crowd of anxious faces, a sky of weird birds. When we brought them down, they touched the wavy ground: like awkward things, like herons and albatrosses.

Peter Thabit Jones © 2016

Published in BALLAD OF KILVEY HILL by Peter Thabit Jones, 1999