Kiting by t.m. thomson

Kiting
by t.m. thomson



Sun slips down, disbanding its yellow over oak & maple
as the wild blue of twilight raises its head shaggy
with firefly gold & starlight sequins.

Fox slinks along edge of wood, pausing & raising her head
to sniff, no doubt to take measure of me, standing
hushed & enjoying her sylvan undulations.

Blackbird hops, his neck & head irised indigo, parallel
to ground as he rifles for beetle & seed, having 
forgotten the stale shards of biscuits
that comprise his winter meals.

I must look like a woman living her second or third 
girlhood, plunking myself down in the evening
grass, one shoe off, my shorts green, shirt
rumpled & tired kite beside me.

Wind was my friend today, allowing frame & spine
& tail to ride its tides, rise with waves, dip
with undertow, sky an ocean whose 
expanse boggles mind.

Time lost itself in the afternoon & the motions
of arm & sail & the honeysuckle incense
surging from forest’s fringe.

Now the day recedes in tired limbs & a breeze
peppered by bat’s barbed caper & my own
breath’s drift from exuberant currents

to gloaming’s pitchy center.


~inspired by John Taraheeff’s “The Kite”

Hear t.m. thomson recite the poem on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:

t.m. thomson is co-author of Frame & Mount the Sky (2017), a chapbook of ekphrastic poetry, as well the author as Strum and Lull (2019) and The Profusion (2019). She is a lover of animals, art, trees, surrealism, black and white movies, walking in autumn rains, feeding wild birds in winter, playing in spring mud, & bat-watching in summer. Her first full-length collection of poems, Plunge, has just been published by Uncollected Press. You can find more of her work at https://www.facebook.com/TaunjaThomsonWriter