Red Kite

Onto that long snowing of sand

the sea had nudged another derelict,

red as the rising sun in smog, and sheer

as butterflies, kite string and all,

ready to fly.

And it would have been a perfect

gift from the green tide, if

I hadn’t, that day, in the idleness

of beaches, chucked

a stone at a silver

foraging fish—

and hit him, dead

center.

He leaped,

in a twisting flash of belly-white

so much like human pain I caught my breath

an ugly moment—then

the fish swam on, as graceful as before.

It was only that one

numbing

moment,

the terrible lifetime wait

as the fishflash in the air

meant quick or dead—how can I put it—

annihilation

hung there in the wind,

and a kite from the sea bled

red pain across the sky.