winged kingdom

a sestina

I don’t know what kinds of things hinder you from writing poetry, but for me this week it was anger. Anger snatched away the entirety of my mental capacity. Or perhaps it is more truthful to say that I willingly handed over every last shred? Regardless, my creative energy was spent. So instead of raging against the dying of light¹ with a villanelle as I had hoped, I will offer a three-year-old sestina involving mushrooms, music, and the significance of long-legged waterfowl.

Sestinas may seem daunting, but start with just six words. Mine were: well, dwell, light, flight, tales, sails. These are rearranged as the line endings for six stanzas.

If you have read this one before, I hope you’ll read it again and find fresh wings.

The Great Blue Heron and the Welling Song
a sestina

Our home made ready like an ancient well,
Adorned with wildflowers, decked in light
To host a troubadour whose moonlit tales
Rang out across the hallows where we dwell.
Fried chicken-of-the-woods and swallows’ flight
Refreshed our famished hearts and filled our sails.

Thus friendship-dressed to tread the dawn with sails
Unfurled, reciting verses we knew well,
Stout wingéd dragons heralded the flight
Of cranes and herons in the sacred light
Around that island. My own mind did dwell
On parking lot and landmark pine-tree tales.

The tellers of these earthbound fairy tales
Accompanied me surely as the sails
Of mythic ones who, mid the stardome, dwell
Their beacons beckoning me, my eyes well
-ed up with the fullness of such kindred light
then tucked away my silent vision’s flight

But afterward recalled another flight
I’d witnessed once among the creek cattails
And rushes, walking in the reed-rimmed light,
Surprised a heron swift to lift his sails
And flee my startled step, retreating well
Before I neared the bank. Ponder and dwell

Awhile upon this image; further dwell
On sandhills who, like crosses in their flight,
Pilgrim the plains with trumpet sound at well-
Spring inns. How shameless nature’s tales!
Astonishment abounds astounds assails
Our bleary bruised beleaguered satellite.

For one who unapproachable in light
Swooped down from lofty heights and stooped to dwell
Among us, he who talks with women, sails
With fishermen, surrounded by a flight
Of angels, thirsted, bled, and rose. The tales
Are true: his welling song sings all things well.

Low sails a silver heron on its flight
Above van-dwellers’ dwindling hoards of tales,
Full-fledged delight, winged kingdom-come groundswell.

that third photo is chicken-of-the-woods or, as I like to call it, froth fling

1. See “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas