It's Still Life

Sestina for the Cliffs at Beachy Head

Here, where the chalk cliffs meet the endless blue,
I walk to shed the weight of thought, to stand
like wind-struck grass—alive, yet barely touched.
The lighthouse spins its scarlet warning—bright
against the tide’s slow gnaw, the edge’s creed:
what falls—will rise again in salt and light.

No prayer but this: the gulls’ harsh, encircling light,
their cries stitched into waves of crushing blue.
I’ve memorised the rocks’ old, ruthless creed—
how time is just a fist of silt and stand,
how even cliffs must kneel to dawn’s first bright
stroke, though the earth stays cold, untender, touched.

You’d think the sea, at least, might leave me touched,
but it just steals—each warning drowned in light.
My orange pack burns like a wound, too bright
against the grass—the hue’s indifferent blue.
I came to learn the art of how to stand
where all else crumbles. Learned the cliff’s creed:

to hold is to be hollowed. This is creed.
The wind licks clean what hands have never touched.
Far off, the tiny figures pause and stand,
their shadows brief as spindrift in the light.
One step. The drop yawns wide, a throat of blue.
How small we are. How fierce the edge. How bright.

And yet—the grass still hums, spring-like, bright.
The lighthouse keeps its blood-red, faithful creed.
I stand, a woman in white who scans the blue
as if my gaze alone could keep it touched,
could nail the sky in place with just my light.
(But cliffs don’t care who walks them, how they stand.)

This is how I stand: half here, half stand—
a flicker in the chalk’s long, bright
unfolding. All my warning? Just the light
that gutters as it speaks the sea’s dark creed.
The gulls pass through me. I am touched,
then not. The world is blue. And blue. And blue.

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I really don’t enjoy writing sestinas, but I thought I’d exercise my brain and give it a try again. Sestina: 6 stanzas with 6 lines per stanza, and 6 end words that spiral through the entire poem.

PAD (Poem-a-Day Challenge) Day15 with Prompt: Write to a poem form. Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025 All Mischief Reserved.