The Magnificent Colours of the Kite-Carrier

The beach is in uproar—

it bulges and recedes on that slick tide

that is a glabrous Sunday. Against the flow,

a child holds a steady course past sticky limbs,

ice-cream drips, dog-licks.

He bears aloft a rainbow kite.

Its span envelops him like a shield, casting

a shadow that bumps and catches

on scorched marram and smooth flat rocks

that clack beneath his size fours.

He treads his way past the lifeguard hut,

weathered signs that warn No help beyond this point.

Now he has reached the low mudflats

where in that quiet pocket of purple heather

and yellow gorse he is at his zenith. The kite

is loosed into blue; soars above

a ten-year-old boy, wide-eyed below

the bright spectrum’s arc.

The Quarrel

We are almost there. The shine

of the track wiped between us,

the flat steppe around, damp

with morning haw and silence.

We side-step bog-pools, granite

fingernails settle in their beds.

Someone lit a campfire, ashing

the ground; peaks of blue mud flake.

Near the track’s end, an underbelly

of green fern softens the climb.

A tinny radio rises over

thistle stacks. Yellow tents

jut out, snug in base camp

while rain shawls the summit.

We return on each other’s footprints,

tread a fraction of each other’s path.

_______________

Marguerite Doyle lives in Dublin. Her credits include Stillpoint Literary Magazine, CAROUSEL,The New Welsh Reader, Vallum and Mslexia. Marguerite was commended for her entry to the Desmond O’Grady 2020 International Poetry Prize and shortlisted and highly commended for Anthology’s Poetry Award in 2021.