All the days began and ended with crimson,
whether flowing with an abundance of tangerine
or saturated with the soft hues of saffron,
depended mostly on the seasonal viridian.
The afternoon sky never changed though, always a pale azure.
Why couldn’t it ever be a shade of purple like amethyst?

She’d always delighted in things of amethyst,
and as all days began and ended with crimson,
she accepted the fact that she’d always face the effects of azure.
In the lull of the day, she’d close her eyes and see lazy shades of tangerine,
but opening them once more; she was snapped back to the views of viridian.
Sometimes the sweeping countryside was painted yellow like saffron;

harvest time was the beginning of the days of saffron.
She wondered why the meadows couldn’t ever be lilac like amethyst;
for now, they were a lovely shade of viridian.
And as the day moved along, there came creases of crimson
with its various placid shades of tangerine.
The blue from earlier didn’t seem so bad now; what was wrong with azure?

Yet deep in her heart, she knew the answer to azure,
and as her hair glowed in the last light of saffron,
and as the day passed over with a faint tinge of tangerine,
she laid back and dreamt of a world colored in amethyst.
The following day, she was awoken by streams of crimson,
and out in the far-off distance, shown waves of vivacious viridian.

But as the winds blew east to west, casting shadows on its viridian,
the sky began to blacken, turning a darker shade of azure.
Then the poppies swayed, brilliant in their beds of crimson,
each little face marked boldly with a fleck of saffron.
And against the foreboding sky, still absent of amethyst,
a bolt of lightning struck in trembling tangerine.

The whole landscape then unfurled, transforming to tangerine.
Black plumes of smoke choked out all the velvety viridian,
and in the wake of disaster came a sudden array of amethyst.
Fiery fields full of bloodthirsty life blotted out any hope for azure
and wilted away the soon-to-be season of saffron.
All was cursed now in the vilest of crimson.

She stood and prayed for the sky to regain conscious efforts of azure.
Sadly, the waves of fortitude would not yield its season of saffron.
Patchworks of hopefulness died that day in a different kind of crimson.

© 2023 Michelle Cook

Photo credit: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/trees-countryside-painting-6573250/

This poem is called a Sestina. If you’d like to learn how to write your own, this site gives some good examples. 😉 ~M

How to Write a Sestina (with Examples and Diagrams)