Thursday, August 20, 2020

Thursday Poem - A Kite Is a Victim

A kite is a victim you are sure of.
You love it because it pulls
gentle enough to call you master,
strong enough to call you fool;
because it lives like a desperate
trained falcon in the high sweet air
and you can always haul it down
to tame it in your drawer.

A kite is a fish you have already caught
in a pool where no fish come,
so you play him carefully and long,
and hope he won't give up,
or the wind die down.

A kite is the last poem you've written,
so you give it to the wind,
but you don't let it go
until someone finds you
something else to do.

A kite is a contract of glory
that must be made with the sun,
so you make friends with the field
the river and the wind,
then you pray the whole cold night before,
under the travelling cordless moon
to make you worthy and lyric and pure.

Leonard Cohen
(from The Spice-box of Earth)

2 comments:

Tabor said...

What a lovely poem. Would love to be able to create such images with my mind.

Barbara Rogers said...

Oh I wonder if he sang this anytime... but just as a poem it evokes such great feelings of flying kites. I found at the beach there is usually a steady wind that doesn't turn off and on like it does over hills and vales.