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Needing No Right to Roam: The Red Kite

 

rises as he hitchhikes a spiral

of warm air; his driver is silent

and he is carefree in the passenger seat.

 

Uplifted to the heights, he alights, gliding,

black fingers splayed, his once hunched back,

hoisting no pack, now stretched wide in flight.

 

Far below, the lining of the land is an unfurling map.

Streams are strings of inky wool. The small parcel

of a gingham handkerchief is the carcass of a lost sheep.

 

The binoculars of the kite’s eyes, steep pupils

set in bright yellow, drink in the details below.

The eye of a rabbit – a wet black balloon.

 

A cracked frozen pond – a broken compass face;

things reflect him – and the drifting embers

of thousands like him – buoyant and wandering,

 

far above barbed wire fences, cresting

the Black Mountains, from the west, the east,

the wind in his feathers, selving in the fresh air.

 

 

Toby Cotton grew up on a farm in Herefordshire and now lives in a cottage amidst Welsh mountains. He is currently pursuing a creative writing MA at the University of Aberystwyth. His poems appear or are forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Boundby, Pearl Press, Ink Sweat & Tears, Wildfire Words and Black Cat Poetry Press. He is the poetry editor at GossamerWight Literary Magazine.

 

 

 

 

The red kite (Milvus milvus), despite being a carrion scavenger, was heavily persecuted throughout the United Kingdom, reduced to as few as five individuals in a remote corner of Wales in the early twentieth century. Thanks to dedicated, unyielding local conservation efforts, followed by a translocation breeding programme, the red kite was saved from extinction in the United Kingdom and now numbers over 4000 breeding pairs across the country.