Kite

It took three hands to hold and knot the line,
splice roll on roll on roll until the kite
we'd run to get in air disappeared from sight.
We tied it to a backstop
when we broke for lunch.
Then added more length,
one hand furrowed
where the knuckle bent
while the others knotted
wound to unwound string.
We handed it back and forth, the sky,
like a thing we'd made.
Soon your sons will try
their own tether of blood.
I only know their names.
You drove me grimly to the airport
halfway through our last visit
as I wept for wind I
wounded with a fist. I think
of the midair arborist whose hand,
until they shut it down, clenched
the power line he'd touched.
She always said I had
an addict's personality.
I couldn't stop rising,
left Sol and then our Local
Group of galaxies behind.
In the background radiation,
is the echo of the tremens
that unkiltered everything.
According to the physics
there's no farther stringing out.
Please remember, till the wrapped
ball fattens like a mummy's
head, how hard at dusk
we worked to bring it in.

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Copyright © 2015 Dore Kiesselbach All rights reserved
from Cherry Tree
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission