the kite

launch downwind, reel in on sneak, pay out line on jump. with wind home the kite reads the real field — direction, strength, gusts — and without it, vanilla weather alone. there is no meter anywhere on the screen: the kite is the meter, held in your own hand, and a good breeze is something you can see from across a valley.

let go and it rides away downwind, gone. fly one under a thunderstorm and the sky sometimes answers down the string — attribution, damage, a little ash, all of it honest. sixteen dyed colours, so a kite says whose it is from a long way off.