Kites

It’s light that first attracts
my eyes, a glint of fire overhead,
and then the tug of rufous thread
unreeled from earth to air –
where twinned, entwining helixes
unite the rhyming pair

in soaring dance. Down here,
a moor-patterning grid of pylons, masts
and wire-mesh extends its vast
design. The kites, astride
the bypass now, with fourfold wings
and forking tails divide

the sky between them. Swathes
of edgeland caught within their wheeling span,
I see them scout and circle, scan
the fields and tonsured hill
with pinions poised, then pivot there,
anticipate the kill

and swoop. As daylight falls
I stand entranced beneath the reddened sky,
a single figure, steeple-high,
exposed on open ground
for savage, all-pursuing love
to run its rings around.