Jason William Hait: A Life in Words

Sestina

For Ayelet

If it strikes you with any sense of surprise

Then that is a fact I do not regret

Though it might confer a degree of ambivalence

To which the boldest emotional cartographer may never hope to return

There still lies in love this promise to refresh

And yet in all refreshment lies the promise of decay.

Should one find themselves on the island of decay

Or awash upon the gritty beaches of surprise

One might consider that they should refresh

And cleanse themselves of the grit and regret

And look toward a healthy return

To the shores across the way called "Ambivalence."

Once returned to the isle of "Ambivalence"

Behind your back might lurk the shadow of decay

And you might be wary of its inevitable return

(Though that should come as no surprise

in fact, and it's nothing you should regret;

rather, it's something designed to refresh)

And there is something in this word "Refresh"

Which carries with it a connotation that implies ambivalence

As if, in refreshment, there was an escape of regret

That was leading, inexorably, to overall decay;

If this comes as an unwelcome surprise

You needn't read on, you needn't return.

Should you choose, however, to grant me a return

You might find something to refresh;

Perhaps it is your own surprise

Or rather, your newfound lack of ambivalence

That throws into shadows the promise of decay;

That casts away the threat of regret.

Lovers and loves, I am filled with regret,

Yet each day I vow to return,

And cast aside this leech of decay

In the hopes that I bring something to refresh;

Though you might bring to me a healthy dose of ambivalence,

I might bring to you a healthy dose of surprise.

For it's the decay I most strongly regret;

And I mostly desire a return to the surprise—

But for now, I am content to refresh the ambivalence.