sestinas

You said that you would never want to be
remembered as anything but lucky.
But now, a year after your death, and here,
in this stark, symmetrical place more
rigid than the most restrictive poem,
I wonder whom to blame your luck on—God?

You said that you could always turn to God,
that given any situation He would be
more solace than the most respected poem.
And did I think that I was merely lucky
in my talent and accomplishment? More
likely God had put me, for some reason, here.

Still, my father, I ask why you are here.
And through those long, untimely years did God
watch your slow paralysis grow, more
deaf than He had any right to be?
I’d rather think that you were just unlucky
and not some pawn in God’s unending poem.

I’d like to think that somehow my small poem
could bring a measure of solace, even here.
Whitman said he felt that death was lucky,
that he could far outstrip most any god,
that through his manly verses we could be
immortal—a self, a song, a kosmos, something more.

Soon enough, we’ll all be nothing more
than figures in some unforgotten poem
(if we’re lucky). God, don’t let us be
cut off, incomplete, like a sestina, ending here.

October. They decide it is time to move.
The family has grown too large, the house
too small. The father smokes his pipe.
He says, I know that you all love
this house. He turns to his child
who is crying. She doesn’t want to leave.

Outside in the large bright yard the leaves
are turning. They know it is time to move
down onto the ground where the child
will rake them together and make a house
for her dolls to play in. They love
the child. A small bird starts to pipe

his song to the leaves while the pipe
in the father’s hand sputters. The father leaves
no doubt that he’s made up his mind. He loves
his family; that’s why they must move.
The child says, this is a wonderful house.
But nobody listens. She’s only a child.

The father continues to talk. The child
cries, staring out at the Indian pipes
in her backyard, wondering if the birds of this house
will pack up their children, their nests, and leave
the old yard. Do birds ever move?
Do they know her sadness, her love?

Her father is smoking and talking of love.
Does he know what it’s like being a child?
He knows she doesn’t want to move.
She hates him sitting there smoking his pipe.
When has he ever been forced to leave
something he loved? He can’t love this house.

The father sits by himself in the house
thinking how painful it is to love
a daughter, a house. He’s watched her leave
saying she hates him. She’s just a child
but it hurts nonetheless. Smoking his pipe
he wonders if he is wrong about the move.

Outside the bird pipes: Don’t move. Don’t move.
The bright leaves fall on the wonderful house.
And the child sits crying, learning about love.