My first Sestina

  Sometimes I swear I can see your  bones

 stretching the skin on your hands

Too quick for my heart to follow

Squinting all of me, I watch you in the sunlight

The weight of this sinks me to the earth

nothing is more slippery than time

Just a blink ago in time

my skin sheltered these bones
 and introduced you to this earth

My finger gripped by your reflexed hand

I accompanied your acquaintance with the Sunlight
so many such inaugurations soon to follow

No harried schedule yet to follow

and a life full of time

You slept incubated in window sunlight

screaming fragility from your prefused  bones

 my cheek enough exploration for your hand

home encapsulating your earth

unsuspendable spinnings of the earth

seasons, solstices, innumerable tides then follow

relentless marching forward of the hands

of dictator merciless time

Hope teases me with wish bones
Grant me your frozen youth in the sunlight

Each morning arrives the sunlight
delivering invitations from the earth

promising sticks and stones and animal bones

luring mushrooming feet to follow

The pledge of a loftier view this time

Tomorrow offers you his  hand

My reaching repels your hand

Nourished by the sunlight

you grow away, not up with time 

My aching shakes the earth 

Soul stumbling, I struggle to follow

the swiftness of your bones

Time cracks open Mother Earth
sunlight bursting from her broken bones
In her outstretched hands I fall low

I was recently intrigued by an article I read about the use of Sestinas by Italian poets during the Renaissance.  I am sure that somewhere in my scholastic past, my brain brushed over the form. It certainly didn't make much of an impression and I'm sure I was never required to write one.  I would have remembered that particular torture.  My intrigue sparked a personal challenge.  I wanted to try it.  

The sestina is a difficult form in which, rather than simply rhyming, the actual line-ending words are repeated in successive stanzas in a designated rotating order. A sestina consists of six 6-line stanzas, concluding with a 3-line “envoi” which incorporates all the line-ending words, some hidden inside the lines. The prescribed pattern for using the 6 line-ending words is:

1st stanza 1 2 3 4 5 6

2nd stanza 6 1 5 2 4 3

3rd stanza 3 6 4 1 2 5

4th stanza 5 3 2 6 1 4

5th stanza 4 5 1 3 6 2

6th stanza 2 4 6 5 3 1

envoi 2--5 4--3 6--1

At first, I thought having structure would make the poem easier.   I was wrong.  It was hard.  How is it done without being repetitive, dull, or cliche?  At least I did it.  My inspiration came from a photo I took of Ansel on a recent hike, but the idea applies to all of my children and my recent identity crisis.