Spring equinox teleutons

 

 

 

 

The teleutons of the fifth stanza are not the

teleutons of the first, though they hang

the same way over the bridge-rail.

 

Ezra Pound

 

 

From The Sestina Playbook by Jules Nyquist 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eleven years ago I had the courage to start a different life. When one turns a corner, one can never leave something totally behind, but one can move forward.  Eleven years ago on spring equinox I arrived in Albuquerque, with an apartment lease, a few published poems and no book, but a desire for more open space for my soul. Space to fill what was missing in my Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota life. Songs and stories from my friends I left behind were packed into a suitcase. 

 

 

 

 

I start building my labyrinth from the center. Circle stones around my backyard cactus.  I hauled stones from the yard in my wheelbarrow, to put together a few at a time to make a circle. A path forms between the rocks. More rocks follow, larger circles. An entrance now marks the place where intuition meets rational thought. The labyrinth shows. A question is asked or a puzzling dilemma presented. Thought patterns converse with me, an answer, a knowing.

 

Chakras, planets, cycles, seasons. Solstices and equinoxes.  The same path comes around again, but on the return I am changed. Different, yet seeing those same rocks, the same dirt. It is not perfect, but it doesn’t need to be. The sestina pattern works the same way. After a third or fourth stanza of a teleuton repeating, it’s changed. We’ve changed. Friends visit from far-away places. Then stop. A pandemic encircles us. Temporarily stops. We move forward, then stop. There is war. We watch. We stop. We watch again until we cannot.

 

 

We wait for rain in the high desert. Daylight Savings Time announces itself in the clocks, as if humans have any control of the time. The light shines and makes shadows and I mark them on the dirt. Clouds roll in. I see the movement every day that I pay attention. Virgas in the distance. Raindrops fall here. Who is left on the planet when the words come around again? Variations on teleutons: a pause/because, the corn, the salt, the roses, the courage, the bombs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Sestina Playbook by Jules Nyquist

 

Atomic Paradise by Jules Nyquist