Daybroken
villanelle after myself
Waiting for a glimpse of sunlight
where the land’s end meets the sky
isn’t really living each night.
Our life dawns; we reach a new height,
we live, we love, and then we die
waiting for a glimpse of sunlight
in the hope we’ll live on, despite
what we know — to withhold goodbye
isn’t really living. Each night
slips unnoticed into hindsight.
We view life with a biased eye,
waiting for a glimpse of sunlight,
waiting for our moment. First light
hints at failure; to strive, to try
isn’t really living each night.
Now for my confession, contrite:
the years I’ve passed were but a lie —
waiting for a glimpse of sunlight
isn’t really living each night.
This poem is part of the Villanelle Vestiges project on Chalkboard. I borrowed the refrains from this villanelle:
Poet’s note:
I wrote “Daybroken” to demonstrate a chain of villanelles. Its two refrain lines are taken from b-lines in “Villanelle for sleepless nights”. B-lines 5 and 11 in “Daybroken” are then used as the refrain lines in “Revisions”. I sort of cheated, though; I actually wrote “Daybroken” after “Revisions”, which means that once I’d chosen where to place the two borrowed b-lines, I only had to write nine lines.
