Three kites by Timothy Murphy - The New Criterion

Poems

September 2009

Three kites

by Timothy Murphy

Burke

was right!

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A twelve-foot fuschia feather
trails from the fighting kite.
Twenty-pound test, the tether.
It longs to sail all night.

Two makeshift tails, our neckties,
silkscreens of the Immortal
Poets in Paradise,
assault the Western Portal,

borne aloft by a bird
of ripstop nylon stitched
by secret spells, the Word.
Onlookers are bewitched.

Fighter lashed to his wrist,
skybird leashed at his calf,
he flings up from his fist
our fractal kite. His laugh

lifts to the Easter sun.
Cancer, can you be glad?
Three kites dance as one,
and life longs to be had.

Timothy Murphy hunts and farms in the Dakotas.

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