TRADITIONS by heart – a sestina. 2008

In love, we know all of the words

Inflections pieced together, a poet’s well

Group – until I glimpse through ajar eye

In love, the overdue touch of hand

Tows tide to shore and wets the sand

Mortals speak through untimed bottled wine and verse.

In love, winepress of time bottles the verse

Anthology of shell on shelf, what words!

Dealing instead the forms of shifting sand

In love, to drink from prospective well – 

L’oiseau cautiously takes seed from hand

Realizing its caged perspective – lies the eye!

In love, this side of me rests in the nest or eye

Sprig shows construction – world’s strong verse!

First Light changes through canopy down to hand

In love, we know captivity is over through words

Net and furrow spread form a weathered well

First flight if you soar or land, return to sand

Capsized vessel displaces protected cargo to sand

But for one heart, or the pleasant me inside eye

Shipment of scripts to slow traffic – it is still well

Love is not the repeated verse

Quiet coppice – habits of freedom chart watery words

Captain or bird, the sea cannot undo link with love’s hand

In love, a store of grain leaves a store in hand

Anchor to withstand water over years, to sand

Could leave the lover without five pence for words

Orienting the heart depicts chamber as sufficient eye

Qualify feeling with stone and you return stolen verse

Beat beat – inside weather builds into bucket for well

In love, hold oar to language – one is hidden well

My hair my eyes my emphatic want for quiet hand

None of these verbs can arrest the bird during verse

In love, some prose is shared but none is without sand

New love makes us feel safe to look one in the eye

With one hand they ensnare the heart – with words:

two verses  -    -      -    -   -   catch rainwater in the well        

love the essential beam under words -  - give me your hand

remember the one who removed sand  -    - from your eye