A Thing of Beauty

Five skips in a row

is a thing

of beauty

says

Nik

in ‘Wakefield’

referring to skimming a flat rock

across the smooth

surface of a lake;

so too

is that bamboo toothbrush

I used this morning

light as those balsa wood gliders

I flew as a kid

over the paddocks

behind the school;

and those opening chords of ‘Sugar, Sugar’

like being tasered

by God

+pic courtesy of Wikipedia

The Kite and the String

 

I am reading a manual called ‘The Kite and the String’

Because I have trouble getting my thoughts

off the ground;

 

They run away from me like that fifty dollar note

The wind caught while I was crossing

the main road;

 

the writer taught the need to ‘abandon’ and ‘control’;

a kite that lifts and a string that unspools just enough to let the kite

fly happily along

 

but not so much that it gets caught

In power-lines or entangled in its own tail.

I like that very much.

 

The kite is the thought

and the string the firm hand of the poet

that keep that thought aloft