The Kite

Here, in front of the summer hotel the beach waits like an altar. We are lying on a cloth of sand while the Atlantic noon stains the world in light. It was much the same five years ago. I remember how Ezio Pinza was flying a kite for the children. None of us noticed it then. The pleated lady was still a nest of her knitting. Four pouchy fellows kept their policy of gin and tonic while trading some money. The parasol girls slept, sun-sitting their lovely years. No one thought how precious it was, or even how funny the festival seemed, square rigged in the air. The air was a season they had bought, like the cloth of sand. I've been waiting on this private stretch of summer land, counting these five years and wondering why. I mean, it was different that time with Ezio Pinza flying a kite. Maybe, after all, he knew something more and was right.