The Pentagonal Kite

is worth every dime it takes. High-tech, high-gloss, high-frontier, it dares and out-dazzles anything in the air. A lean white Atlas of a body. Steel wings like a sparrow hawk, swept back. The narrow tight-slit painted eyes above a scarlet half-smiling twenty megaton beak that gleams like the burnished business-end of an axe. Step back: launch this kite skyward. It spirals high in broad unquenchable arcs. Now, in the sun, it seems to split in two - one red, one white, a leaping tangling pas-de-deux. Suddenly the sky goes dark. The kites collide at a god-dizzying height: a gold-black wreath of flame, a crimson froth of fire, fireworks, and stars reflected in our staring upturned faces. Prerecord for future airing what would have been our oohs and ahs.