My Sestina Masterpiece

Once upon a time I took a creative writing class in high school.  Our most difficult assignment (for me anyway) was writing a sestina.  This is a type of poem with a very particular set of rules, including reusing the same six words in a certain order throughout.  I haven’t really done much poetry writing since my angsty teen years, but this one was a true feat to write, and after the darkness comes a glimmer of light, so I decided to share (did you catch my internal rhyme back there?).

Faded memory

Much lost time had elapsed since this woman

Could bear the abuse of her forgotten

Past.  Now she’s silent and sadly withered,

As she is paralyzed, feeble, and old.

It is not her fault that she is so sad

And alone.  She just remembers the rain.

Many things had happened in this dark rain

That could not be put aside.  This woman

Had to block out the memories of sadness

And pain, which still linger on forgotten

Bruises and scars.  Searching through her dark old

Eyes, are few memories but of old withered

Roses she had no time for, which withered

And died from lack of soft fallen rain.

Then she viewed the garden with roses old

And dead,  A death this mistreated woman

Could not understand or ever forget

In her future, now present.  And how sad

It is.  Now time slips by in a sad

Way.  When she was a young girl, her withered

Aunt would say, “You’ll, too, be forgotten

And ugly soon.”  And on the window, rain

Would pelt to enforce the words this woman

Said.  The girl trembled from these awful old

Words, then joined by those of the other old

Ladies who would tell her that she was sad

And worthless.  Feeling as if the woman

Had stabbed her and made her become withered

In pain and grief.  All this time the hard rain

Would beat in the poor girl’s mind.  Forgotten

As she has, the abuse, she can’t forget

A sharp pain buried in her loving old

Heart.  She looks back at all the times it rained,

And does not know what she feels, but a sad

Memory she can’t find in her withered

Mind.  She is a loving, simple woman

The rain now can’t touch.  Forgotten and sad

She is not, nor too old and withered.

Forgiveness makes her a happy woman.

–Terree L. Klaes–  1995