Kiting (edited)

[milo]

I really enjoyed the delicious 'role reversal'. Your Bonnie Brae sounds a lot like my Banockburn, more grim than bonnie.

I am not skilled enough to offer much so sorry if this is meagre or obtuse.

I think you did fine, thanks for commenting it has been very helpful.

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This seemed so straight forward at first, but I should have known better because now I need to work it out and I can't and late for work and... Anyway this is an initial tester critique but I will be back. 

Kiting --- I presume that if there is any playing with meanings of 'kiting' it isn't the financial fraud that I've just learnt about, although in specific searches for "Kiting" it does come top of the list. So I'm going for the archaic sense of 'kite' meaning a person who preys on others... possibly

In Bonniebrae a field is split by kills -- I like use of the gaelic/english here which would something like 'nice/lovely/beautiful hill' and its contrast with 'split by kills'. I'm not sure if Bonniebrae is real or fictitious for this poem but as a place name it would read better as Bonnie Brae
and hedged by thickets on the southern side,
a vagrant patch of long untended graves
and then the darkest forest man has known. -- This whole stanza seems as though it could be the key to the rest of the poem. It sounds like it could be a place where there was a battle or war, but then the 'darkest forest' bit throws in something which could be more sinister.

On a Spring day with wind just strong enough -- Is 'Spring' capitalised because it is an actual holiday called 'Spring Day', we don't have that it Britain therefore I may be missing a possible significance of any tradition associated with it.
to bloom a sail and launch a skiff we gathered - -- And this is the first of a few references that are definitely nautical and obviously for a reason. Although at times it is slightly tricky but perhaps that is intentional, from a scientific viewpoint swimming and flying are identical in every way apart from the 'medium' in which they are done.

a score of us to test our skills at flying -- 'a score' here is somewhat disarming because at first it just appears to be quaintly poetic which doesn't seem right -- I can't escape from the whole sinister aspect that I think is present and so score takes on the meaning of a score to settle.
kites like fauns might dance a mating dance. -- Pan???
I brought the finest kite you’ll ever see -
a hand-painted red komodo dragon -- The choice of kite is interesting. We all know that komodo dragons kill humans if they get the opportunity, in fact they'll kill anything, even other komodo dragons.
with double wires and a twenty-five foot tail.

I slowly let her up and gave her reign -- I can see how 'reign' could be used here in this context but I think its choice is more for a specific purpose.
then deftly pulled her aft to paint the sky. -- 'aft' another nautical term -- it may be acceptable as an aviation term also but I'm not sure. When used with 'pulled' here it seems perhaps to work against itself because you don't pull a boat aft, a kite?? perhaps, but I'm certain that its chiefly used as a nautical term. Aft essentially means back or towards the back/rear, but if you are using this so it would read 'then deftly pulled her back' I don't think it works.
I spent two hours teaching her to roll
and slowly build to form a somersault.

Then sometime after noon we traded places -- I know I'm missing something in 'after noon' and 'traded places' just don't know what yet, the use of 'traded' indicates a more business like feel or some kind of dealings
and I was high above and breeching clouds - -- At first this was the only bit of critique I could come up with, because I thought ah ha there's a spelling mistake, but it's not is it 'breeching' I can see a way that both spellings would work but 'breeching' with it's meaning of a harness for an animal(specifically horse) fits in with other stuff like reign, pulled her back/aft -- In my dictionary on my laptop 'breeching' throws up also a thing called a 'hold back' which is the strap of a harness that connects to the 'breeching'
a just-fledged falcon drunk on swoops and dives, -- this confuses me, it seems to add yet another extra element and I would love to be certain about whether it's inclusion is necessary but I'm not. The falcon does seem like the  'odd-one-out' image of the poem
I spun and dipped held only by my line. -- Flyfishing? Surely not... I'm not being serious.

But fickle kites don’t have the nerve for kiting
as men don’t have the buoyancy to fly -- 'buoyancy' was the first thing that sent me on the 'nautical references trail' although it is appropriate for both water and air. It also has that added meaning of cheerfulness..
so who’s to say whose fault, the bridle buckled, -- The horse theme returns
the guy wire snapped, I keeled and then I tumbled -- The boat theme is here twice--a guy wire can be for a sail on a boat-- I don't think it's ever used for kites—I may be wrong there. And 'keeled' is a definite nautical term -- used like this I think it could only refer to a boat that has keeled (past tense) a person can keel over or in past tense they have keeled over but by the very nature of the word and that it is part of a ship to keel and past tensed keeled without the over or other descriptor can only be referring to a ship
back home, my body broke against the ground.

I have said a hell of lot more than what I originally intended - I was only really going to ask a couple of things for clarification, like 'breeching' - but anyway. I've wrote it now, I don't know if it will be of any use because it is hard to make suggestions about a poem when I don't fully understand it's meaning and grammar and punctuation isn't really going to be an issue so there's not much else I can do than say what I'm thinking as I go through each line.

It is ultimately a very fascinating read, cheers

Mark

WOW!! You have done a lot of work here and you obviously have a sharp eye (and a keen wit)
Heaps of thanks, this is very helpful.

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It is entirely possible that I wasn't in the best frame of mind when I read the pome, but it did seem a bit forced and unpoetic to me such as in:

and then the darkest forest man has known
On a Spring day
wind just strong enough to bloom a sail and launch a skiff
a just-fledged falcon drunk on swoops and dives,

All the above read like fragment of poems read elsewhere, like lines mass produced in a factory in Fujian.
Cliches, conjunctions and unwarranted hyphenation.
Of course, I am sleep deprived and annoyed as a result. So pinch of salt please.

Edit: or just dense

Thanks for reading and commenting. 
Sorry it didn't work for you.
If there was a specific cliche you noticed I would appreciate you pointing it out as I like to eliminate them when I find them.