Red Kite rises

Red Kite in the after-rain:
a mountain-sharp survivor 
of the apocalypse city –
wild exists,
wild lives 
in your triangle stillness.

Moth-tail, rust-tilt, lit-up by clouds,
your feather-tips grip the wind itself;
like you harness more than air –
the whole sky is subject 
to your clawed curtsey.

I am – iron and balcony
give way to dandelion belly, bird-bone beast.

You do not warn.
You pre-exist.
Seagulls have just scattered at one glimpse of you, 
gliding in from where God waits 
with a gauntlet glove.

C. LJ Ireton 2025