#2 (A Birthday Sestina)

I also decided to post my sestina that I wrote for class to be critiqued this week as my free entry. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.


Sestina on Life

There once stood a tree.
It represented a life of freedom
from all the bad things, like drugs,
their cold sentence shaped like grapes
which were the same color as weeds,
so ironic since they couldn’t climb.

The best part of life is the climb.
When you were a kid, it was up a tree,
then life became entangled with weeds.
There is a pure element to the freedom,
like wine made from fresh grapes,
free of pesticides and drugs.

Kill your body and fill it with drugs
to watch your blood pressure climb.
Then go ingest a million grapes
to save your life, or plant a tree
and give the land back its freedom.
Light shines through the weeds.

Annoying people position themselves as weeds
do, right next to you, like a drug
that gets you high but never gives you freedom.
Vines can strangle and climb
up the trunk of the strongest tree
but they still support the grapes.

Raisins are yummy dried grapes
that are shriveled like a castaway weed
removed from the base of a tree.
If love is the best drug,
and life is the hardest climb,
then death must be true freedom.

So many never know freedom,
squished like rotten grapes,
bound tight until they learn to climb
out, over, away; run from the weeds.
Make sure to leave your drugs
behind. Bury them under a tree.

The strongest tree knows its freedom
away from the drugs of life, fresh like grapes
grown amongst weeds but still able to climb.