Page 53 - WTP Vol. XI #6

Fathers and Sons
for my brother, George
Our father helped us build and fly a kite. We tossed it high to launch it on thin air, and there it hovered, way out on its string.
As a boy he’d found a kit in a magazine.
He wrote, received, then built and launched a kite that wouldn’t stay aloft because
it lacked a tail. No tail, no explanation.
But while his father worked in some back field, ours worked through an early engineering triumph, discovering how a little dangle
added let his kite rise up on air.
Then after supper he took his father on
to pasture where they flew and flew his kite.
As Father always smiled to remember.
Faith
Heaven stems from a tree with a swing
where I’d sail over the limb like nothing
though all the birds fly away at once wary still
of my presence
and I’d loop over it again and again believing birds will return.
Hamilton approaches a half century living in Iowa City, and making a home with his dear wife, Rebecca Clouse, where he reads, writes, gardens, and walks dogs. A collec- tion of his essays, A Certain Arc, came out from Ice Cube Press in 2019. Other books include Deep River: a Memoir of a Missouri Farm and a collection of poems, Ossabaw. Emeritus Professor of English at The University of Iowa, he served for more than 30 years as editor of The Iowa Review.
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