It's Still Life

One Day Over Time

I’m not always as green as grass.
I am without direction, like wind,
I’m not always clear as spring’s sky
but I do count those falling stars,
and make wishes on them, and I wrap
myself in hope of seeing the sun rising.

I used to believe Revelations, rising
up like the Bible says. Through the grass,
linen shrouded, in a rapture and wrap,
but not everone feels the same wind,
sees the same green, or wishes on stars.
I look to my heart now, not to the sky.

I see clouds when I see clear blue sky,
I find weeds growing everywhere, rising
up, a chase for the moon and stars.
I see drought and dry in green grass,
and I feel autumn when the Sahara wind
blows freakish warm. And nowadays I wrap

myself twice in traditions. I coax and wrap
my imagation in usual rusty autumn sky,
blanketing myself against northerly wind.
My old porous, chalky bones, deny rising
as Revelations claims. Uplifting grass.
One day I will be amongst orbiting stars,

singing songs, running scales like stars
on ladders. I’ll wear crisp white shirts, wrap
my balding head in ideas fresh as grass.
One day I’ll brood about how blue is the sky,
if it’s bluer than memory. Envy a moon rising,
and mourn my lost strength stolen by the wind.

One day my words will be lost on the wind,
swept away like dust across the many stars.
And then I will rise, a righteous uprising
amongst the drought and dry weeds that wrap
eternity into sky. Shine down on me, sky –
while my feet tread the coolness of grass.

Linen shrouded, rapture and wrap,
eternity shines down on this sky
as my feet tread the coolness of grass

Various prompts in this one. Wordle #368, PB’s “Numbers” and Miz Quickly’s “Friday for the Weekend”. And of the whole thing is treated to a mind-melting poetic form – the Sestina, defined as “A complex French verse form,unrhymed, consisting of six stanzas of six lines each and a three-line envoy. The end words of the first stanza are repeated in a different order as end words in each of the subsequent five stanzas.”