[lit-ideas] A Throwaway Sestina of Thanks
- From: Eric Yost <eyost1132@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Lit-Ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:40:33 -0400
Lit-Ideas Sestina
This note sparkles from your poems
Which will linger awhile in memory,
And this is just a way to say thank-you.
Sharing poems can make distant people
Closer even if they are not close friends,
Even if they only scatter thin words.
People swap much worse things than their words,
Expel worse words than any in your poems,
Even to those they think of as close friends.
Such things don’t rest gently in memory,
Can turn close friends into distant people
Who stop sharing, won’t risk saying thank-you.
Poems we love always write a thank-you,
Assembled ways to praise our own words,
And the worlds we get from other people,
Even if they don’t frame them in poems,
And they do not sparkle in our memory,
May just talk to us simply, as our true friends.
Words condense to poems, people to friends
With or without the need to say thank-you:
Sometimes sharing sparkles in memory.
Distant people emerge from behind words,
A prize beyond the scope of all poems,
A surprise that shows poems in people.
Remember mere words may not make people
Surprised even if they are distant friends,
Maybe expecting too much of the poems,
Hoping for a quick reply or thank-you,
At least humble acknowledgment in words
That an effort resides in memory.
All our thank-you’s will ease from memory
Since time soon tends to revise people,
Though a scattered parcel of our shared words
May live in thoughts of our distant friends,
Move them decades from now to say thank-you,
Though not for this, but for all the poems.
Poets shape words to hold long memory,
Though we should praise poems less than people,
And so distant friends, I say thank-you.
Eric
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