Welcome to my April 2024 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

I’ve revealed my theme (A poem a day…with picture), and of course, I am unashamedly blogging my theme letters on the fly.  So, here goes nothing!

So, without further ado, S is for ...Sestina. “A Sestina is a type of poem which consists of six stanzas. A stanza is a lyrical form of lines with a set meter. In a Sestine, each stanza has six lines, so six stanzas with six lines each. The end of a Sestina concludes with a final Stanza that consists of only three lines. This is called an envoy. An envoy is a concluding three-lined stanza at the end of a poem. An envoy is used to comment on the person or subject introduced in the Sestina. A sestina is not meant to rhyme as most poems do. It does, however, repeat the last six words of the first stanza during the rest of the poem.“

Prairie Winter

Winter winds bite
Where prairie grasses flow
Across fields of grain,
Culverts and ditches
Piling snow in places
Hidden from eyes.

Tiny peering eyes
Find only traces to bite
Off branches in places
Where they sit under creek-flow,
Cowering in ditches
Hoping for hints of grain.

Leftover husks of grain,
Rotting potato eyes,
Roll into ditches
So deer and rats can bite,
Finding food among the flow
Of sleeting, slippery places.

Snow curls round in places,
Burying fields and grain.
Whiteness covers ground in flow.
Looking out, bright blinking eyes,
Teeth chatter in the cold bite
While shifting piles fill ditches.

Cars slide off road into ditches
From black ice littering places
On the highway. Sharp bite
Of sleet like pellets of grain
Sending shots, stinging eyes.
Tears begin to flow.

Over flat prairie grass flow
Rivers of snow and ice running into ditches,
Covering creatures, hiding dead eyes,
Swallowing leftover green places,
Crushing unharvested fields of grain.
Knifing into the body, gusts bite.

In bare ditches winter’s bite
Flows into remnants of grain,
Where eyes search for safe places.

Thanks for visiting my 2024 A to Z Challenge – Letter S.

Guess I’m kind of going rogue too…although I do like using the “official” letters…