Red kites, black faces, the smell of clouds
low on the mountainside, and you, emerging
filthy, spewed out of the dark, and the birds
wheeling overhead, a pony slips, its leg fractures,
and I think this will make you cry, you never cry.
I am on the outside.
This is my face, you never see it, I have my life
in books, you can’t read.
You come home, you’ve been drinking, I try
to tell you I’ve seen red kites, I try to explain
using words like exaltation, you look away.
Your father, his father before him, all the brothers.
Eastertide, and the preacher comes across the hill,
I go to listen, he is on fire, I am cold. at home,
I get down on my knees and blacken the range,
I think of red kites, I think of air, I think of you
continuously. I sew by oil light, I live in a dull glow,
a half-life. You come in, your face lit from the side,
dust-grimy, beautiful.
Previously published in the Ver Poets Anthology, 2017; and 'How to Win at Kings Cross' (erbacce press)