Selection of Poems

SESTINA

(for Chris/in memory of Kate D'Lima)

The boy I was has left my heart,
Gone with the song of yesterday
That teased him to the shining hill,
And I am left with what I am,
An ageing man still chasing words
Across the bare fields of my years.

They haunt me down the changing years,
Those days that stirred my eager heart.
I'm now more careful with my words
That lit the dreams of yesterday.
Time shadows all I think I am,
Now hopes are thin trees on a hill.

Each thought now seems to climb a hill
And fails to lighten my late years.
It's I who wonders who I am
Within my beating, grown-up heart.
The body aches with yesterday,
The moments are like dying words.

What are the stars in one man's words
As each day goes beyond night's hill?
The sky has taken yesterday,
The sea has washed away the years,
And moments run within my heart.
The words have made me who I am.

This journey to find who I am
Along the roads of all my words
Still stops within my tell-tale heart.
As clouds come down to touch the hill
Each sun now marks the coming years
And burns the myths of yesterday.

The boy now dwells in yesterday.
What part is he in who I am,
This man now counting final years
And playing with the truth of words?
Why climb imagination's hill
When all we are ticks in our heart?

Was yesterday so green with words?
The man I am looks to the hill
That took the boy, my years, my heart.

Peter Thabit Jones © 2009