I didn't have a name for it,

although a kite , I thought, might be a way

to render visible what we fearfully

divine - a sort of heavenography.

On the ever-arching page of sky,

I loosed a long-tailed quill -

utensil of transcription and research -

to read what it might scribble.

Taking down the wind's dictation -

mandarin decipherer of every

dashed-off, gust-shaped ideogram -

I held the swooping line.

I must have looked an idiot,

trying to restrain that cursive,

twirling on a single blowy spot,

my cloak tied up in knots.

Behind my cuneiform moustache,

I think my face was pale.

I may have seemed ridiculous.

Does seem mean be ridiculous?

Two girls with eager glances,

and their mother in silken green,

a dragon around her waist,

followed the creed of my wrist.

I saw the levity of their delight

at what I did with gravity,

and looped my freehand fiercer

on heaven's airy blank -

a plumb-line hurled at nothing,

calligraphic poems that vanished,

illegibly, beyond redress...