One Way of Looking at a Kite
by Hideko Sueoka
by Hideko Sueoka
A red paper led by a thin string. Forgotten in spring and summer. You rarely see such thin wings in rain and snow. In January, you find them at the rift in clouds, soaring up in the chilly sky. Read the wind. Skipper of the invisible. Now you yourself control the string on the grey shore. Too soon, you sense one best flow, go, go, go up. On the sand of the shore, the lines of footprints are feathers fallen, scattered, extended right and left. Seagulls drop in and out of vision. They stare at your kite, not frightened at it. For a moment, the wind dies. Your red ray seems to roll down, but your hand sways it in subtle ways. Your hand is a joystick of a drone. Luckily, do the seagulls call whirlwind? Your kite hovers, flutter, and fly towards a scud. Again the ray scythes the air, sails with grace high on the wrinkled water, afire with a salty smell. You run faster and faster. The string escapes from the fingers. The kite without a rider is gone. Gone to the celestial horizon. Only sunlight you follow.
Hideko Sueoka is a Japanese poet and translator living in Tokyo. Her debut chapbook was out from Clare Songbirds Publishing House (USA) in 2018. Her poems were published in Arrival at Elsewhere (Against theGrain), and the zine Stay Home Diary (Bitter Melon). Visit her blog: http://joyousnoise0509.blogspot.com/
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