Poetry Part III

As I mentioned in Part II, I have been spending a lot of time outside to take breaks from homework. I greatly enjoy biking and find myself free from a lot of the worries that this time has brought. My poetry teacher challenged us to write about a personal triumph and given my recent successes on my two wheeler, I embraced the five senses and wrote my sestina.

A sestina is by far the most challenging of the three traditional forms I was tasked to write. First, the poet must choose six end words, all concrete nouns (nouns that you can touch, taste, smell, feel, or see). Each line in the sextet (six line stanza) is seven to ten syllables in length and must follow the order of the end words, which is offset by one each stanza. The poem ends with a tercet where all the six end words are used, two per line. The sestina is typically left untitled. 

Sestina
By Caleb Gottry

Out from the garage he takes his bike.
Then, he starts down the concrete path,
Seeing clouds that might soon drop water.
Apart from his own, there are no faces
As he pedals alone, like a lost child,
Hoping to return to a lemonade.

He rewards himself with that lemonade,
For the work he did on his bike,
Pedaling next to the cars on his path.
For now, he quenches his thirst with water,
Waiting at the light with other faces, 
Maybe next to another lost child.

He hears a “Good morning” from the child
And he wonders if they want lemonade.
He returns the greeting from his bike
And then focuses again on the path,
Along the canal filled with water,
Joined by unfamiliar faces.

The wind blows against these faces.
Among men, he feels like a child,
But he soon forgets the lemonade
And moves past one unfamiliar bike.
A group in line; all focused on the path
Is what he sees, sweating drops of water.

Now he rides through dirt and water,
Conquering this challenge he faces.
Passed by a man, he, just a child
Sees their shirt: yellow, like the lemonade.
Them on faster wheels, but he on his bike,
Together, they forge a new path.

Stop before crossing the asphalt path;
Cars fueled by oil– him, just by water.
The tinted windows hide their faces
And their machines could crush a child.
He’ll have to wait for his lemonade
Until he can cross on his meager bike.

Carried home by bike before sky water.
A phone lights up faces, showing his path,
And the child drinks his lemonade.