Alright, so I can really be proud of the following poem I gotta put an explanation of the structure on here. Read this explanation first.
A traditional Sestina:
- The lines are grouped into six sestets and a concluding tercet. Thus a Sestina has 39 lines.
- Lines may be of any length. Their length is usually consistent in a single poem. Traditionally (and even more challenging), the poem is written in iambic pentameter. (10 syllables--unstressed-stressed)
- The six words that end each of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of the lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas. The particular pattern is given below. (This kind of recurrent pattern is "lexical repetition".)
- The repeated words are unrhymed.
- The first line of each sestet after the first ends with the same word as the one that ended the last line of the sestet before it.
- In the closing tercet, each of the six words are used, with one in the middle of each line and one at the end.
- The pattern of word-repetition is as follows, where the words that end the lines of the first sestet are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6":
1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3) - Middle and end words of lines in tercet.
Sounds complicated huh?
It was interesting...
here's mine:
All in Your Mind
When I was a child, with a strange child’s mind,
I was convinced trees uprooted at night
and ran and played, as we did in the day.
I knew this because I’d seen in the dark,
the strange way a tree swayed by my window,
as if suddenly coming to a stop.
One night, as I watched, the tree did not stop,
and so, I decided it would not mind
if I got up and watched from the window.
But it moved too fast! Though I watched all night,
I could not spot my tree out in the dark;
but it was there when I woke the next day.
I made a plan with my friend that next day
to watch the tree from my yard and to stop
it if it tried to flee into the dark.
Phase one: to ask my mom if she would mind
if my friend came over and stayed the night.
With that done, we made camp by the window.
At midnight, we both climbed out the window,
and I retold the plans we’d made that day.
I knew the tree liked to go out at night,
but we had to make sure we didn’t stop
it too soon—we watched mostly with our minds
and sank deeper, silent, into the dark,
when, all at once, something stirred from the dark
in my left eye, across from the window.
I thought that it might have been in my mind,
weariness from the efforts of that day,
but the focused, full sight made my heart stop—
it was true! Trees really uproot at night.
I would not lose my tree another night
to the cloak, the aiding veil of the dark.
I shook my friend, stood up straight, and yelled, “STOP!”
but was gripped by a hand from the window.
“I knew you’d been planning something all day.”
Mom! I protested. “It’s all in your mind.”
Still, at night, I often eye my window
and think that the dark’s different than the day;
then, I stop and hear, “It’s all in your mind.”