The poem 'The Kites'

Open your book, Poorvi, at page 142 and read the poem 'The Kites' by Daphne Lister. Read it aloud, or with a friend. It has five short stanzas. If you have ever flown a kite, perhaps at Makar Sankranti in January, you will know the feeling.

Here is what the poem tells, in short. A child is looking up at kites flying high in the air. They look like coloured birds, and the sky is 'wind-whipped': it is a very windy day.

The child makes a wish: to be small, and as light as air. Then the child could climb on a kite and sail up into the sky. Up there, the child would drift along on the kite's paper wings and hear the songs that the wild wind sings.

The child thinks what fun it would be to look right down from up there, over the park and the rooftops of the town. And the people down below would stand and stare (look for a long time, in surprise), and wish that they were the child, high up in the air.

Remember: all of this is a wish. The child is standing on the ground, watching the kites and imagining what it would be like to ride one. It is a poem of imagination, not something anyone can really do.