Poetry

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Sestina

What is written in the ageless lines

That cross your toil-worn aging palms?

Will they have a tale to tell your children,

Or will they only speak of darkness,

Of how you were overtaken by the frost

Of life's winter, everlasting death?

Have you sworn to conquer Demon Death?

Do your words do more than fill the lines

Of paper?  Is there something beyond the frost

I saw in your eyes, which now cower behind your palms?

You keep calling, crying into darkness,

Thinking, hoping, praying it will save your children.

What have you to give your children?

Do you feel the greatest gift is death?

Be not a fool to impart to them the darkness

Of your heart, of the snagging lines

That snake their way across your barren palms.

Set them free from your dungeon of frost.

Have you ever touched the lacy webs of frost?

Have you ever shown them to your children?

No, you only held out empty palms.

Your children, only taught by Death,

Fail to see beyond the criss-cross lines

Of your face, straining to see through darkness.

Can't you see the light beyond the darkness?

Recognize that the growing of the frost

Becomes the harbinger of spring to come; the life lines

That you hold are not your own, but are your children.

Who will be served by the sweet gift of death?

Your children?  Or the writing on your palms?

Here you sit, staring at your palms,

Staring at the drawing darkness,

Goading and prodding Demon Death,

Tracing on the windowpanes the patterns of frost,

Trying to forget your children,

Staring at your hands, their tangled lines.

Don't your palms say more than “Death”?

Can't you melt the lines of growing frost?

Leave your children more than darkness.