Sestina

Those living on the black clean
Streets, families and men,
wake up today.
Early thoughts fall like snowflakes,
Gently.
By the door are boots.

Those with the heaviest boots
Leave the house with clean
Faces, close the door behind them gently.
They are working men.
Townsmen will have teeth like snowflakes
Because they made tubes of factory toothpaste today.

Mothers, too, work today,
brush dust under rugs, clean dirty boots,
and wish to be loved like snowflakes.
Sleeping dogs on hard, wood floors dream clean
Dreams. The women dream of the men
as they sweep into house-rooms gently.

Figured in peace gently,
It wanders, forms and falls today
on earth-dirt. Men
are glad that it is white, and clean, unlike boots.
The cold, wet, pure,
Four-thousand trillion snowflakes.

The children dance amidst snowflakes -
Bounding, diving, gently,
with purple mountain air to clean
their complexions. Play outdoors today,
or do nothing. Kick your boots
for the whimsy of young women and men.

The children await the men.
They run home with snowflakes
for noses, run towards the boots
moving up the walk. Mothers gently
whisk them in. All rose-cheeked today,
greeting smiles shine purely.

The clean ending of each man’s day today:
together watching earth-bound snowflakes gently fall on tired, brown boots.




________


From senior year poetry class. Just for fun.