---

A child watches as her grandfather

holds the string in his right

hand, wrapped around his fingers.  He gathers

the slack each time the kite

jumps or falls in the swirls

of a drenching summer wind.

 

I remember when I was a little girl,

and my dad would send

me out with the green and yellow tissue-paper kite

that we had made, to the field behind our

house.  The waves of barley rippled as far as we

could run.  Dad would stay and watch me

until the sun had dwindled into twilight.

 

He watched me run, and fall, and fly for hours.