Sestina 2

Sestina 2

Across a gravely road

Slurried a brown mouse

Startling the girl

Who sat with her pen

Poised over the papers

She was marking in red

The movement slooched red

Ink from the pen

Dotting the papers

With marks like mouse

Feet covering a road

or tears from a girl

Who thinks a girl

Who sometimes wears red

To avoid being mouse-

Like on the road

Of life, and who papers

Her life with her pen

Shouldn't see pen

Marks as tears, mouse

Feet, or inroads

To failure. Oh girl,

You should have read

Yesterday's newspapers

To know these papers

Marked up with your pen

Won't pave the road

With gold or red

Ribbons for a girl

or rain gutters for a mouse

Everything, even a mouse,

Knows it takes more than paper

Takes more than your pen

to shelter a girl

Trying to build a red

House along a gravely road

Lead yourself to that road, Girl

Wring the red from the pen, turn your lion on that mouse

it’s only paper.