Reconciliation Sestina

Reconciliation Sestina



I walk through the gloom, pause at the sight
of the person I came here to meet
what I see finally makes sense...
and I feel what I’ve come here to know;                              
the Gods bring this as a lesson
of the eternal endurance of time.

It shows in his face, this feeling of time
passing, captured here at this site,
and my pain does not seem to lessen.
I want to stare, but it would not be mete
though he would never tell me no,
and I find memory filled with old scents;

like the candy we bought for a few cents,
(though we stole it from the rack the next time)
ate it out back, hiding so they wouldn’t know,
trying to keep ourselves out of sight.
Our punishment was to have meals with no meat
for two weeks, it was a harsh lesson.

At first we laughed to have such a lesson
...no meat? It made no sense.
Till we found we wanted nothing but meat
but instead, were served potatoes with thyme.
“There are children starving in India!” they would cite.
How is this something every parent knows?

The time has come to leave our quarrel behind, I know,
to embrace the past and lessen
my sense of awe at the sight
and the sense
of a time that has passed.  This time                              
I step forward to meet

my history.  Stepping out, our eyes meet
once again, filling me with what we all know;
our past fills our present.  That time
changes us not as much as we’d think.  A lesson
in life that fills me with the sense
that we haven’t really changed in our sight.

Arms around me, I sense his tears as our cheeks meet;
I know they mix with my own.  Through blurred sight,
after all this time, I hug my twin and finally feel our isolation lessen




Info:

A sestina is meant to be a formalized story.  It must consist of 6 stanzas and an envoi.  The stanzas end with 6 different words in a specific order:
         1: A            2: F          3: C          4: E          5: D          6: B
             B              A              F              C              E              D
             C              E              D              B              A              F
             D              B              A              F              C              E
             E              D              B              A              F              C
             F              C              E              D              B              A

The envoi consists of 3 lines, each line containing 2 of the key words.