Sestina For My Mother Beloved

By: Alexandrite Posted on: September 28, 2007

A Shallamese poet once invented a strict style of formal poetry, wherein six
words are repeated at the ends of six lines per six stanzas in a predetermined
order. It is, in this humble lyricist's opinion, a horrendously difficult form.
This sestina is dedicated to the Mother of the Seasons and Change, Lady
Melantha.

All of Sapience may be summed in four
As circl'ng cycles let the great wheel move:
First fertile Terra springing forth in bloom,
Next misty Fontis cooling Summer's gold,
Then Autumn harking fie'ry trees of snow
And Aeris drifting down a frozen leaf.

The changing hazel offers up one leaf
To multiply and bless, becoming four
Petals of a rose that blooms in snow.
This flower calmed the Treekin--senti'ence moved
By Chaos spread in drunken wake--golden
Eris gave a precious gift, soon blooming

Into walking trunks who talked and bloomed
With sunrise roses healing blackened leaves.
So hail the Dawn! Sun-bathed dew seeps gold
And bids a welcome to Terra 'neath four
Stone monoliths once crumbl'ing, now moving
Souls with curving glyphs. Tell a tale of snow;

The sky weeps, tracing leaven fields in snow,
Relivening Exurio's first bloom
Of waving harvest reaped and threshed and moved
By cutting thunderstorms of swirled leaves--
A gift of change from the hazel of four
True Seasons wrapped in shimm'ring cloth of gold.

Where spurts a fountain memorial gold,
Grow roses fed by liquid Fontis snow
And dancing elemental faeries four
Around which seedlings peek in bloom;
Their bodies sacrificed, their spirits leave
By fire quenched and thus returned, moving

To bypass Maya's muraled halls, moving
To rouse their Lady born in shrouded gold,
To whisper for the aid of verdant leaves
Entwined about the Thyrsus. All snow
Will melt away from honeyed snowdrop blooms
And ornament the glory of the four

Seasons of Change; four elements move
Like blooming vines around a wheel of gold--
Melantha's snow-dewed wreath of hazel leaves.