In Praise Of Kites And Those Who Fly Them Well (to my daughter)

One by one
bright colors rise silently into the sky

Each evening throughout the summer
it is the same: boys and men and their kites
drawn to the empty beach

A few kites soar and dive
recklessly
only to crash in the water or
lay lifeless on the sand –
others seem to strain against
their unseen tethers
struggling to be free

Some nights, it seems too windy for flying
at times, there is no wind at all
but from my balcony
I can always catch sight of
one or two figures and their kites

What do they know, I wonder?
what magic do they whisper
as they perform this duet
against all odds?

The kites I watch most
are the ones that
dance gaily across the sky –
over and over they cavort and laugh
responding to their partners below

As dusk falls
the kites return to the beach 
coyly, surely, some reluctantly
and disappear with the figures in the sand
like lovers into the night

I sometimes think
we are both like kites, you and I
Frank Copley’s dad would perhaps smile
as he did that night in my youth 
my friends and I denying the existence of broken summer love

He had only smiled and said
“a woman is like a finely tuned violin –
it takes a master to play her well.” nothing more
we were left to wonder who were the masters
among us that teenage summer

I never felt like a violin
tall, thin, blonde and kissed with the
immortality of youth – one among many
but on the inside, I felt different
a kite in an age of violins:
needing space to soar
cavort and dive; searching
for that lone figure on the beach
who would recognize that I was not a violin
who had learned the mysterious language
of kites that would at once both
let me fly free and to whom I could
be invisibly connected. someone
to whom I would return surely at dusk.