Witchlight - A Sestina
by Derick Wilcox
A spider follows sunlight 'cross a wall,
the buzz of bees drifts loud from flower's bell,
dry tangled thorns obstruction make and bar
my passage through this corner of the world.
Now I must search, seek out another way
to reach my goal, that vision of my mind.
A witch-light thought that, careless, haunts my mind
has led me here to stand outside the wall,
the wall that bars me from an easy way
and bids me wait, to ring upon the bell,
to tell the folk within that strangers' world
a traveller seeks a way to pass the bar.
They open wide the gate, no longer bar,
welcome me in, seeking to know my mind.
As yet I cannot tell, because their world
is still too strange to me inside their wall.
The gate behind me closes at the bell,
blocking the route for those who pass this way.
Yet very few there are who come this way.
They fear there is a purpose to the bar.
To them the sound of doom-song is the bell,
sounding the knell that acts to blur the mind.
But now I am within the much-feared wall
and still there seems no need to fear this world.
I look to see the people in this world
and no surprise, they seem to be the way
that others are, those folk outside the wall.
Those folk who fear to risk the dreaded bar,
fearing that something strange will tear their mind
apart, that death will follow on the bell.
But now, I hear the ringing of the bell,
calling to those who populate this world,
bringing a cloud that lulls and blurs the mind.
A cloud that cloaks and hides the God-lost way
these people live, protected by the bar
between their world and those outside the wall.
Loud clangs the bell, the witch-fiends show the way
the demons of this world, behind the bar
will shred my mind, and tomb me in their wall
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