Father Kites

By
Jeff Friedman
-

My father has a round face and squints his small dark eyes to squeeze something out or keep it in. As he sails above, he looks as though he’s trying to sell the wind on his new shoe line. Jimmy’s father is long and diamond shaped like a crusader’s shield. He had trouble getting off the ground but now he ticks back and forth in the sky. Recy’s father has a face like a fisher cat and aims his gun at the world as he rides above the playing field. And Steve’s father, a rich man with a shiny white face and a dress suit, hovers like a balloon about to burst. We run in the field with our fathers, keeping them afloat for as long as we can, for as long as the wind lets us. But the moment we enjoy most occurs when it suddenly dies, and our fathers crash into the grass and dirt, helpless, unable to talk or shout.

 



Click here to read Jeff Friedman on the origin of the poem.

Image: Festival of the Winds, IX by Newtown graffiti, licensed under CC 2.0.

Jeff Friedman:

In my book Floating Tales (published by Madhat Press in 2017), I wrote a piece about a generation of fathers, titled “Old Men” in which “old men lose their gravity, floating off the sidewalks.” As they float away, their influence and power vanishes. My father and my friends’ fathers thought they were kings in their own home and wanted to be movers and shakers. My father even bought a plaque that said, “A man is king in his own home, be he prince or peasant.” My mother hid it away in the bathroom. I saw that piece as a kind of “goodbye” to the generation. But nothing is that easy, and I’ve kept coming back to this subject about a generation of fathers, patriarchs, old men who won’t let go of power. I’ve written dozens of these pieces, all very different. My most recent take on the subject is “Father Kites.”

The kite metaphor emerged from the description of my father in relationship to the other father kites. Kites recall childhood for me. They fly for a moment, but then they crash. And the sons need to see the crash, the powerlessness of the fathers, before they can cut loose their influence. The father kites don’t just disappear like the old men in the earlier piece; instead, they fall into the dirt and lie there, unable to speak or shout as they’re used to doing. Darker for sure.

Jeff Friedman
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