Sestina for My Father<\/p>\n
The once green yard is littered with squirrels
\nwhose only crime was a taste for bright green walnuts,
\nnow littering the floor of the house behind locks
\njammed with scraps of metal broken off by my father.
\nEvery day he barricades himself inside the scraps of sanity
\nthat still remain to him. Inside, the house<\/p>\n
smells like the den of some animal, a house
\nwhere the attic would never tempt squirrels
\nto save walnuts or acorns against any insanity
\nwinter might bring, although even now walnuts
\nlitter the attic in small heaps my father
\nhas left behind. This is the way he locks<\/p>\n
the present in place against a past he locks
\ninside himself. Despite his best efforts, the house
\nplots against him, whispering secrets my father
\nchooses not to hear. But dead squirrels
\nlitter the yard like fallen walnuts,
\nand my father tries to buttress his sanity<\/p>\n
within a litany of remembered wrongs. His sanity
\nhas always been a matter he locked
\naway from us, covering himself with a walnut
\nshell of confidence. But this time the house
\nis a shambles, the bodies of dead squirrels
\na testimony to insanity that even my father<\/p>\n
has trouble ignoring. He remembers his own father
\nmarshaling fleets of Buicks and Caddies against insanity.
\nOutside the house the fleet of dead squirrels
\narrayed around the yard become locks
\nholding my father against his will in this house
\nhe has carefully provisioned with walnuts.<\/p>\n
Now, looking at the scattered walnuts
\nlittering each room of the house, my father
\nbegins to realize that even this house,
\nhis home, can no longer protect his sanity.
\nAt night he dreams of complex deadlocks,
\nbut too soon the dream dissolves as squirrels<\/p>\n
slip in to grab walnuts, and the shreds of sanity
\nbecome a dream my father wants desperately to lock
\noutside the house, outside with all those squirrels.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Bill Stifler<\/p>\n
This poem was originally published in Vol. 11 (2011) of Compass Rose<\/cite>.<\/p>\n A sestina is a poem of 39 lines. The first six stanzas each contain six lines all ending with the same six words. The order of the words ending the lines changes in a set pattern with each stanza. The last three lines of the poem are a separate stanza where the six words are again repeated, three at the end of the lines and three in the middle. Some writers use variations on the six words (which I have done here). Others use six rhymes rather than six words as the pattern of repetition. Often, writers will include the six words elsewhere in the poem in addition to the patterned repetitions (which I also do in this poem). Because of the repetition of words, the sestina lends itself to poems addressing obssessions.<\/p>\n This poem is based on a situtation in my father’s life that actually happened (and which became the basis for my initial six words). After the first stanza, I let the pattern of repetitions suggest the evolution of meaning in the poem. In the end, the “father” in the poem becomes a composite of his personality and my own imagination so that the final result goes beyond his individual circumstances and feelings while, I hope, at the same time offers a sense of what mental illness can be like.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sestina for My Father The once green yard is littered with squirrels whose only crime was a taste for bright green walnuts, now littering the floor of the house behind locks jammed with scraps of metal broken off by my father. Every day he barricades himself inside the scraps of sanity that still remain to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1tPlD-6n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":398,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions\/398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billstifler.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}