To better understand this poem please read the author's notes first.
She walks alone along the winter beach;
she's waited for that walk until half tide
to reap artistic harvest from the sea,
and she will find it on those stones; somewhere
along the high tide line that special something lies,
the texture, shape and colour that she seeks.
Her gaze sweeps over jetsam as she seeks.
She knows that what she needs, will on that beach
be recognized when seen, although it lies
amongst the drab detritus of high tide;
she knows the media for her craft are there somewhere,
washed up upon the shoreline from the sea.
Aground, inshore, forgotten by the sea,
the flotsam and the jetsam where she seeks
that rope, shell, glass or driftwood, hid somewhere.
She'll get her inspiration from that beach.
It's her eureka thing, abandoned by the tide,
inspired discovery waits where it lies.
She spots it. With the sense that never lies;
excitement surges through her like the sea
that washed this objet trouve on the tide;
not only will it do; it's what she seeks
that lies down there, beneath her feet, upon the beach.
Her craft will find for it a place somewhere.
Artistic truth looms in her mind somewhere.
These littered things, realities, are lies,
but, placed with other combings from the beach,
and in her hands, those gleanings from the sea
will form the objet d'art she knows her public seeks,
So it will find a market, Christmastide.
There is, in this affair of art, a tide
which, taken at the flood, leads on somewhere.
Since now discovered all the parts she seeks,
the whole, within her mind, before her lies;
skill-crafted art, from the conjunction land with sea,
engendered in the litter of the beach.
This sea-borne rubbish, washed up by the tide,
Far from that beach, she sorts on her work-bench somewhere,
Then, from those lies, she crafts the truth she seeks.
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Author Notes
The sestina is probably the most difficult of the French forms. There are six stanzas of six-lines and a three-line envoi, literally 'send off'. The iambic pentameter is normally used in English, and I have used this throughout except for the fifth line in each stanza and the second line in the envoi where I have inserted the twelve line Alexandine to difference the rhythm slightly since there is nothing absolutely regular about driftwood.
In the third line of the fourth stanza the French word trouve should be pronounced 'trouvay' as it should have an acute accent over the 'e' but I cannot get this programme to let me do that. If anyone knows the HTML for 'e acute' please let me know and i will editi this accordingly.
The last word in each of the lines in the first stanza doesn't rhyme with another as such, but is used in the other stanzas in a specified order. This order is normally abcdef faebdc cfdabe ecbfad deacfb bdfeca. The envoi then uses all six of these last words, three of them as line endings.
My daughter, Anna, an ex teacher, now works as a driftwood sculptress, artist and jewellery maker and this sestina was originally written for her.
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