Select Page

Poetry Friday.

Today is National Kite-Flying Day. That’s what I just read. Hmmm… I’ve always associated kites with March winds. I wonder? And… last night I watched “Kite Runner.” I wonder now, was it scheduled to coincide with this special kite day?

Intrigued, I searched and found a site with lots of trivia for National Kite-Flying Day 2019.

And then I saw some old photos from the St. Paul Daily News, Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection. I had to include them because they reminded me how my brothers and I would make kites out of newspaper and willow sticks. We were never very successful, as I recall.

Stanley Darwin, three years old, with his kite, 1934. Photo: St. Paul Daily News, Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection
Children posing with their elaborate kites, 1937. Photo: Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota Historical Society Photograph Collection


Somewhere, in the back of a closet, I know there are a couple kites. We’ll get them out the next time we spend a day at the coast with our grandkids. And if we go without them, we will walk the beach and enjoy the enormous ones others fly. Last spring, I wrote about a day at the beach; two lines in my beach poem were about those kites–

dragons flying in the sky
tethered to earth with a string

dragons flying in the sky / tethered to earth with a string

And then, of course, when I think of kites, I think of wind and Robert Louis Stevenson’s wonderful poem, one of my favorites, one we read in March.

The Wind
by Robert Louis Stevenson

I saw you toss the kites on high
And blow the birds about the sky;
And all around I heard you pass,
Like ladies’ skirts across the grass—
      O wind, a-blowing all day long,
      O wind, that sings so loud a song!

I saw the different things you did,
But always you yourself you hid.
I felt you push, I heard you call,
I could not see yourself at all—
      O wind, a-blowing all day long,
      O wind, that sings so loud a song!

O you that are so strong and cold,
O blower, are you young or old?
Are you a beast of field and tree,
Or just a stronger child than me?
      O wind, a-blowing all day long,
      O wind, that sings so loud a song!

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I’m linking up with #PoetryFriday hosted by Laura Prudie Salas at her blog Writing the World for Kids. She’s celebrating the publication of her newest book, “Snowman – Cold = Puddle: Spring Equations,” and invited us to share an equation poem. Here’s mine.

kite + wind = touching the sky

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Photo Gallery: A kite-flying day during family week at Oregon coast