Red Kite, Blue Sky, the debut poetry collection from Madeleine May Kunin, celebrates life and the natural world, occasioned by the birth of grand-children, the memories of friendship and past birthdays/Bar Mitzvahs, a gift of plum-colored gloves from the poet's daughter, the Sicilian sun which "melts my argument against myself," with sharp observations and humor. Like Emily Dickinson before her, Kunin does not shy away from death; rather she embraces the anticipation "before death drags me deep," the gap in her life when her beloved husband dies, the fear of immigration to America during World War II with "an H for Hebrew, I found out later," and the sadness of being isolated as an older woman living alone during the pandemic. For years Kunin was caught in the tempo of politics -- as governor, as a federal official, and as an ambassador -- but as she eased into retirement from public life, she found a door that opened for her to explore the multi-layered language of poetry. She used this form she has dabbled in for years as a new outlet and, like her passion for promulgating women in politics, she was able to catalog her changing body and mind as she aged, the loss of late-in-life love, the quotidian details found in nature and home life, and ultimately dealing with COVID-19. Kunin explores the police brutality that lead to George Floyd's death -- "A black man couldn't breathe/Because a white man/Pressed down on his neck/'Mama, ' he cried, before/He died"-- with the raw emotion of witnessing injustice and horrible wrong, with a unique and unbending power of her own political, life-affirming, poetic voice.