Six Places Walked (a sestina)
SIX WALKS TRODDEN BENEATH THE FEET OF A YOUNGER MAN
(a sestina)
Shoes, all worn and dirty from the earth-encrusted pavement
Punctuated by the bronzed corrosion marking all the highest tides
On record, left behind as landmarks
By some hurricane, forgotten—but by statues
Of the city’s founder, watching from above
The blank and drunken plains, all lit with emptiness.
Fumes from fuels all spent on emptiness,
Looking for long-lost futures, pressed into forgotten pavements
Passed-by opportunities of times long over;
Young men had their say, they tossed their tea in tides
And posed for statues
But this world’s already got its fill of landmarks.
Cubist glasswork landmarks
Piled high by ancient Buddhist shrines to emptiness
All shining new: the cars, phones, stadiums and statues
Fast imbibed and spilled on holiday’s blank pavement
Largest flags defended from the tides
Of spent and hidden tubes of airplane glue, in greening wooded mountains up above.
Stone-walled customs tower over
Dark Age history, preserved in icy water’s landmark
Sheltered in a golden range from rage of machination’s tide
The snow-capped peaking cowtrails, grazing emptiness
And cobbled stones still left in never-patterned lieu of pavement
Leading to some stonework lion, prison cells, medieval clockworks, frozen time as statues.
Return: the deco, statuesque
Alone, and snorted up my nostrils, flared above
The rooftops, overlooking police changing pavement
All the turning wheels of centuries, a landmark
To be crushed beneath the grinding emptiness
Of rapid-melting ice flow’s rising tides.
Left behind by river’s moderated swell of tides
And melted mountain snow, a duplicated mass of iron statues
Standing in an empty square
The false potential of the past still shadows over
Left behind a burden, left a crumbled landmark
To life’s ownership of failing curb appeal, by the cracking pavement.
Tides of life do tend to wash right over
Glory of all statues stood as landmarks:
Emptiness of place is hard as pavement.
- S. Winn
[Sestina composed for the @poetryriot prompt “where your feet have walked.”]
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