Sestina #1

The mother works meticulously, her weathered hands
Weaving deftly between the satin ribbons
That lace through feathery hair while the daughter sits in patient silence
Tracing her name in the fireplace’s cooling ashes.
When the fire dies, where does the flame
Go, she wonders aloud; Does it dry up like a puddle

In the sun or does it live longer than the puddle,
Waiting to reappear when I wish to warm my hands
On its soothing flame?
The mother’s fingers pause on the ribbons,
And she tells the daughter that all flames become ashes
Just as all sound will be silence.

The daughter sits in pensive silence,
Wondering how a flame and silence and a puddle
Can have a common fate of nothing, but the one leaves ashes
Behind, and the others leave nothing that human hands
Can touch—when I am gone, will there be nothing? the daughter asks, and the mother
Pulls taut the ribbons
And speaks softly into the diminishing flame:

Your soul is like an eternal flame
That burns into every night and knows no silence,
And is sometimes filled with happy things like ribbons
For your hair, and splashing in freshly drawn puddles,
And might sometimes be filled with sad things like nightmares and troubles that fill your hands. .
But your soul leaves no ashes.

The daughter thinks quietly about the ashes
And wonders how God had made the flame
And the world, using nothing but his hands;
Something as mere as a puddle
As large as silence
And simple as ribbons

For her hair. As her mother tightens those ribbons
The daughter brushes her fingers through the ashes
And forms a small powdery puddle
In her palm and rests it upon the hearth under the shadow of the dying flame.
Her mother kisses her goodnight and leaves, and in the new silence
The daughter feels like she holds the world in her hands.

E.

No, I'm not dark and depressed.

Loneliness swathes like a midnight curtain
Gulping up the remnants of the day’s mirth
as it tightens its grip on the obscurity wrought by nightfall.
Shadows billowing on the closet doors remind us
Of the worry ghosts who haunt the night,
shrouded only by sunlight and a fresh start.
Rather than floating unnoticed through the crimson-tipped night,
illuminated only by the passing numerals on anxious alarm clocks,
the apparitions become bold and assuming, bearing their haunting facades
in our cavernous swarm of thoughts, dreams, and musings.
As the world rests its eyes,
Our wistful breath and damp hearts wait desperately for morning


E.

Blog #46

I can't tell you how many of these blogs I have started with the intention of maintaining them full time. As I approach the halfway point of grad school, it seems even more foolish to begin a blog when my free time is limited to a few cigarettes a day and perhaps a televsion show now and then. However, I have gathered a list of reasons to persuade myself why beginning a blog is in my best interest. In no particular order:

• I have an endless bounty of hilarious, shocking, & entertaining stories from my perils in student teaching. To not share them would be doing a disservice to the ones I love and care about.
• I have the memory of an Alzheimer-ridden 90-year-old and lack the capacity to remember every thought or idea that crosses my head in a given day. This way, I will (hopefully, fingers crossed!) make mention of things in my blog that would otherwise get lost in transition with the rest of the junk in my head.
• I enjoy writing but don't get nearly enough time for the recreational sort since my life is devoted to lesson plan after lesson plan. Now, I can blog in class and it will appear as if I'm typing notes when in fact, I am probably writing about the enormous underwear lines my fashion-unconscious professor is sporting that day. Take that, M. Ed program.

So I only have 3 reasons, but I think they are good reasons, and I like the number 3. If this blog even continues into next month I will be overcome with surprise, but for now, I'll give myself the benefit of the doubt since I'm on winter break and have nothing better to do.

Peace

E.