Nothing Works in Alaska ( A Sestina)
A new sestina, full of half-truths and whole truths and repeated words.
The first six stanzas use the same end words, repeating in a set pattern, the last uses all six words in three lines, in their original order.
Nothing Works In Alaska
Nothing works in Alaska.
My compass’ magnet pulls too far west.
Your eyes, glimmering, shift to the left.
And the sun floats aimlessly, still up
At midnight or half past.
There is no way to guide us home.
You were with me when I left home.
A whispered word, Alaska.
Shifting our breath to the past,
Then one last train headed west.
Your tears, and a plane to take me up.
Before you knew it I had left.
My politics, too far to the left
Of yours and I with no concept of home;
Me, Miss Throw-In-The-Towel; you who never gives up.
So, you followed me to Alaska -
Flew 4,000 miles to the west.
And suddenly our future crashed into our past.
We both had, it turned out, things from our past
That had been hidden before we’d left.
When we shared secrets, on that train headed west,
You didn’t tell me the things from home
You would carry with you to Alaska.
I didn’t mention the things I wouldn’t give up.
So, when you missed a step, I began too quickly to give up.
And you were a stranger, dressed in strange patterns of your past.
We wanted to run in some direction from Alaska,
To go back and see what it was we had left.
I was searching for a change, you for a home.
A cliché in the last frontier: looking for something out west.
But some days, when I don’t run like the river flowing west,
And you, with the wind, sit steady and don't blow up,
We settle into the soft sides of our unsteady home.
You don’t mention the future, I am not thinking of the past,
And I squeeze your hand, where it sits by my side, to the left,
And we sigh. Knowing that nothing really works in Alaska.
On the side of a road in Alaska, thumbs pointed west,
With nothing left of the day, and the sun still up,
The final cars speed past. And we, somehow, feel at home.
The first six stanzas use the same end words, repeating in a set pattern, the last uses all six words in three lines, in their original order.
Nothing Works In Alaska
Nothing works in Alaska.
My compass’ magnet pulls too far west.
Your eyes, glimmering, shift to the left.
And the sun floats aimlessly, still up
At midnight or half past.
There is no way to guide us home.
You were with me when I left home.
A whispered word, Alaska.
Shifting our breath to the past,
Then one last train headed west.
Your tears, and a plane to take me up.
Before you knew it I had left.
My politics, too far to the left
Of yours and I with no concept of home;
Me, Miss Throw-In-The-Towel; you who never gives up.
So, you followed me to Alaska -
Flew 4,000 miles to the west.
And suddenly our future crashed into our past.
We both had, it turned out, things from our past
That had been hidden before we’d left.
When we shared secrets, on that train headed west,
You didn’t tell me the things from home
You would carry with you to Alaska.
I didn’t mention the things I wouldn’t give up.
So, when you missed a step, I began too quickly to give up.
And you were a stranger, dressed in strange patterns of your past.
We wanted to run in some direction from Alaska,
To go back and see what it was we had left.
I was searching for a change, you for a home.
A cliché in the last frontier: looking for something out west.
But some days, when I don’t run like the river flowing west,
And you, with the wind, sit steady and don't blow up,
We settle into the soft sides of our unsteady home.
You don’t mention the future, I am not thinking of the past,
And I squeeze your hand, where it sits by my side, to the left,
And we sigh. Knowing that nothing really works in Alaska.
On the side of a road in Alaska, thumbs pointed west,
With nothing left of the day, and the sun still up,
The final cars speed past. And we, somehow, feel at home.