By causeway ruffed with reeds

Below stone circle windowed space,

Sifting sights in syllables of touch you taste.

Your one hand to the other grasp

The weathered chair with wondered soul

In sight of sail

Across the inlet water fresh

In take of air

As red against the blue below

Shifts as one with swaying corn

On land that rises to the east,

That swells as to a single figure small

As speck upon a sea of ice,

As mizzenmast in ocean squall I stand,

Fists tight around the hilt,

Listing back against the wrench of wind,

Taut the tendril slices clean the air

As paper cuts the softened skin within

Sun strikes the canvas high

Whilst shadow on the earth dilates,

A pool of weighted soil dark,

The strand of fluid mooring brakes

Crisp upon the ears.

. . .

I was fortunate to have met Ian Easton, a Rear Admiral in the navy, in the late 1980s when I frequently visited his home in Freshwater on The Isle of Weight, Southern England. As we talked one day I watched a kite fly across the water where I had my first sailing lesson with him on a boat moored close to his family home. I was reminded of my father who would tell me stories of his kite flying days in what was then British India. Somehow, these two important figures in my life joined forces in this poem that travels the length and breadth of boyhood and manhood.

ORIGINATOR · Mike de Sousa

ART FORM · Poetry

COMPLETED · 1988

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