THE POET'S HEART

(a sestina)

Her words like grace in mountain mists
And shine in quarter-moon’s reclining last.
To pull my nervous pen resist
That I should stand in starlight’s shadow cast.
Her airs to breathe that I might know
The poet’s laugh before my dawning glow.

Long have I bent to midnight’s candle’s glow,
As ghosts and lovers filled its mist.
To search my piec’ed heart that I might know
How I would come to love at last.
How strange this hour’s strutting stage I’ve cast
And pushed at madness’ name this love resist.

But times my heart could not resist,
And I would bask in deeper madness’ glow.
In sacred hopes my soul would cast,
To deeply live in madness’ incense mist.
Soon days would blacken loving’s last,
In pain and loss that lovers know.

I’d stain my books this lovers’ pain to know,
And sharing did I long resist.
How deep and long the madness’ echoes last.
But in the winter’s short day’s glow,
I found a voice that called in tempered mist;
A voice that versely healing love spells cast.

A voice in softened language cast.
A voice compelling me that I would know.
A voice unknown yet ever missed.
My brain cries stop but heart will not resist.
It gains my soul a shining glow,
The first, though it appears as last.

I give her all my words, the first and last,
And show her how each poem is cast.
And she returns her lines with twilight glow.
Then we join lines to better know
Our words becoming one without resist.
And mingling our hearts in wordly mists.

It’s love in words we cast and lines we know
At last to use my pen without resist,
Our words like glow in midnight mountain mists.


Geoff's Notes: The poem is written in lines altering between iambic pentameter and tetrameter and utilizing a rhyme scheme of ABABCC in the first stanza which then moves throughout the stanzas based on the sestina structure and utilizing the envoi that echoes the last three lines of the proceeding 6th stanza...