Untitled, Sestina #2

7 February 2008, 8:25 AM
I didn't post sestina #1- it was too personal. But here's my second go at it. This is, by the way, another installment of the poetry class. I'm liking this form. She said no one can write just one. I didn't believe her. Now I do.

Water swiftly evaporates
from my skin. The ocean pulses
beneath my tears—
they roll toward the waves
which swallow
my body, slowly carry

me from land, though they cannot carry
my memory, as it is evaporating
into the sky. I mustn’t swallow
the salt water, pulsing
within the waves.
But what about my tears?

If I don’t swallow my tears,
they will join the sea, carry
and bury my mind in the sky as the waves
slowly evaporate
the frantic pulsing
of my thoughts, if I don’t swallow…

But I don’t. I don’t swallow.
As my eyes flow, the tears
fall in rhythm with my pulse,
in rhythm with the waters which carry
me, and I do not evaporate,
nor my thoughts within the waves.

Tears cease, rain falls, clouds waver
and dissipate. A swallow-
tailed kite skims an azure sky evaporated
from the ocean of my tears—
salty residue remains upon my skin. Carried
softly on the waves which pulse

with rhythms of the deep, my pulse
finds rhythm against the waves
which still carry
my sorrows. Yet I taste, I swallow
the water, turned sweet. My tears
have evaporated.

Pulsing slows, the Swallow-tailed kite tells me
that beyond the waves which carried me,
my tears evaporated, I have found land.