Here’s the draft:

It’s Just a Day or Two

A red-winged blackbird perches on a reed.
I’ve waited long for spring to come, to warm
the early morning, bring the light. I need
to walk outside, let go of the long storm.
I watch the water’s mirror stirred by wind,
a changing patch of cat’s paw ripples pinned

to the surface like a reminder pinned
to a cork board–Don’t Forget–that I read
and don’t remember, mind blown clean like wind
swept afternoons. I try to think, to warm
these fingers in between pockets of storm.
It’s just a day or two–a week–I need,

a month or a year to catch up. I knead
my tired hands through the thin gloves, palms pinned
by damp cold, try to chase the shadow storm
that lingers after night recedes. A reed
stands like a lucky flute. The sun looks warm
enough to matter, but the steel-blue wind

picks up my skin, scrapes at my face. I wind
my scarlet scarf around my neck. I need
to button up, let my worries down, warm
the same old poem over and over, pinned
like a flower on my lapel. A reed
becomes an instrument. A thunder storm

sounds like a symphony. I want a storm
of oboes, want the melodies to wind
like water while my feet stay dry. A reed
makes a baton or a slim stake. I need
to be anchored fast, settled somewhere, pinned
but with a little room to move, to warm

up to my middle age. I want to warm
these tendering years after the flash storm
of hide and seeking, four decades pinned
to growing older, feel my days unwind,
give into time, stand as still as a reed
in this short field of my dreams. Yes, I need

spring to warm the pond and its ducks, to wind
through each reed shoots of green, even pinned
by winter’s fists of storm. I need this poem.

Here’s the draft:

Do What You Can

Tuesday’s assignment: Write a sestina,
a sextet of chosen words at the end
of each line, over and over. Now bend
the meanings, keep the music, make it lean,
lead the reader. A 36- line form,
it travels on and on, a rushing swarm

of words. This repetition makes a swarm,
the same words flying through the sestina
like birds above a field. You need to form
new images, discoveries to the end.
Take a deep breath, take another, don’t lean
on your elbows, don’t roll your eyes. Just bend

your creaky old knees a few times, then bend
your brain to the task, enter the wild swarm,
follow what narrative you can, and lean
against experience, ride this sestina
like a greedy crow to the corn row’s end.
Feel the summer wind in your head and form

the thinking you’ve hidden in black wings, form
dreams buried by night. Maybe you land, bend
to the earth, dig with your fingers to end
the work, the guessing, the questions’ cold swarm.
Do what you can to find that sestina–
don’t scrimp and let your harvest come lean.

When you started, the first few words looked lean
as a fence post and fettered by this form,
but see–you’re nearly through this sestina.
You’ve written your way around the last bend,
scribbled harder into the stanza’s swarm.
Flex your hands. You can almost taste the end

of the afternoon when you’ll reach the end
of this poem. Dusk will fall and you can lean
into evening, forget about the swarm,
loosen your dinnertime thoughts from the form,
say hello to your beautiful wife, bend
her ear, tell her about this sestina

while in the lamplight gnats swarm and the form
rests. You bend your heart, lean into her hair,
end the evening, start your next sestina.