My Garden Gateway Pot (A Sestina)

Note: The Sestina is a special form of poem that has six six-line stanzas followed by a four-line stanza. The final words in all the stanzas are the same but they rotate in their order. The final stanza has all the words in it.

By the garden gateway

Stood a floral pot;

Its shape and hue, Chinese.

I asked about its price,

Here’s the incipient humor,

It’s made of simple plywood!

A pot like that of plywood?

I bought it for my gateway.

Then I bragged about my pot,

“It’s vintage Ming Chinese.”

Eyes rolled at imagined price.

It was such delightful humor.

Great fun, my garden humor.

It’s only painted plywood,

Standing in my garden gateway.

Guests were flummoxed by my pot

(It’s really not Ming Chinese)

Guessing at its price.

I wondered at what price

In friendship was my humor.

Yet still they passed off the plywood

In my garden gateway,

And joked that I was smoking pot.

No, just weird fun, Chinese.

Short lived was the Joke Chinese.

And I began to pay the price.

Integrity lost to short term humor.

I still have the painted plywood

In my garden gateway,

But it is just a fake pot.

And should I buy an honest pot,

One that is true Ming Chinese,

I’ll conceal the purchase price,

Forget the garden humor,

And leave the painted plywood

Standing in the gateway.

My “high price” plywood pot was just my style of humor.

It was fun when new friends were impressed by Chinese

art that decorated my fancy garden gateway.