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.