DEFYING GRAVITY

Childhood reminiscences provide ample material for verse because, it seems to me, there's something about the haziness and unreliability of memory that seems more compatible with poetry than with prose.

THE KITE   

That truant day, I slipped away
to the Cave Hill with makeshift kite.
Fourteen years old, escaped from school,
my uniform in disarray,
absconded, not at all contrite,
I fled with mooring-string and spool,
a headstrong, heedless, wayward boy,
to fly my home-made pride and joy.
Beneath me, grey, the city spread
like scattered jigsaw pieces spilled.
Above me, hot, July sun burned
down on my bare, uncovered head.
The kite rose up with warm air filled.
I steadied it as I had learned.
It sailed, breathtakingly, above,
free, yet restrained: somehow like love.