Red Kites

They sweep the silvered clouds,
wheeling and tumbling,

a pair of stringless red kites,
red-brown in an immense sky.

Their yellow beaks and snow-white under-
wings flash with afternoon sun,

red-brown tail forks scything azure
and pale yellow eyes

scanning for easy prey
darting through red-brown bracken.

Kim M. Russell, 18th September 2025

Image by Jack Lucas Smith on Unsplash

This Thursday at the dVerse Poets Pub we are Meeting the Bar with Laura, the colour motif and Amy Lowell’s Imagism.

Laura has given a definition of the word ‘motif’, which comes from the French word for pattern. “Motifs are specific details, concepts, or structures that show up over and over again in a literary work, adding layers of meaning.”  She gives us the example of the repeating greens in Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby, as well as extracts from Amy Lowell’s poem ‘Towns in Colour’.

Laura would like us to write poetry with a colour motif, taking one or more literal colours, repeating the colour word(s) throughout the poem, using colour synonyms, employing colour with its specific meaning to the poem’s theme, and letting our colour motif(s) also become symbolic.

Our poetry style is optional but Laura says we may want to experiment with Imagism: using language of common speech, direct and economical, using common words and phrases.

37 thoughts on “Red Kites”

  8. O how red hawks “scything azure” raptors a motif of skyward predation … Owls, hawks, crows and vultures contend for majesty in our morning skies, and I love ’em all, being too tall for their breakfast.

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  13. Red Kites were re-introduced at Harewood House here in Yorkshire a few years back and have been steadily spreading out since then – dog-fighting with crows as they go. One time, at the Yorkshire Showground, they were flying so close by the windows of the restaurant that you could see all the colours just as you describe masterfully in your poem, Kim – magic…

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    1. I’m pleased you like it, Ange. We saw quite a few red kites during the summer, and a few weeks ago a sparrowhawk brought down a pigeon in our garden. Now it’s back to jackdaws and magpies, not forgetting blackbirds and robins.

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