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.
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