A Love Sestina

~~ A Love Sestina ~~

the warmth of your sweet love
does fill my yearning heart
it burns within our kiss
and sparkles in your smile
such that the flow of time
is gently put on hold

together we will hold
a crucible of love
we’ll stir it over time
and forge a common heart
whose beating makes us smile
compelling us to kiss

it’s you I long to kiss!
my lucky lips will hold
the sweet taste of your smile
which yields the words of love
that wells up from your heart
until the end of time

let’s always make some time
to steal another kiss
and strengthen thus our heart
our future will then hold
created by our love
ten thousand ways to smile

I think about your smile
and of the lucky time
we started making love
beginning with a kiss
how gently you did hold
my gaze and touch my heart!

when I first won your heart
and you flashed me a smile
I knew you’d always hold
keys to the vault of time
we’d seal it with a kiss
and bury it in love

you hold my heart, my love!
your smile I’ll ever kiss
we’ll bind the hands of time

– Paul Raworth Bennett

.

Note: A sestina is a technically-challenging poetic form consisting of six 6-line stanzas (“sestets”) followed by a 3-line stanza (the “envoi”).

In each sestet, six end-words (in this case, “love”, “heart”, “kiss”, “smile”, “time”, and “hold”) are used according to a fixed, repetitive structure (note how the last end-word in each sestet becomes the first end-word in the following sestet, and the other end-words switch places in a spiral pattern):

In the envoi, each end-word appears once, not necessarily at the end of a line.