my first sestina

It is amazing how much improvement can be made on a thing by getting plenty of feedback. I wrote a sestina this summer, to see if I could. On my own the answer was "yes, it is possible to hammer some words more or less into that structure". However, it wasn't very good, and I wasn't very happy with it. Therefore I sent it off to the Mists Bardic College and skyped into one of their meetings for feedback, and the tone of their comments reaffirmed my opinion, but, of course, they had helpful suggestions of things I could do about it.

So I set it aside and did other things for a number of weeks. Then, when I had a chance to catch up on email I discovered that gmail had helpfully filtered a reply from Rian, another member of the Mists Bardic College (who hadn't made it to that meeting), into a seldom opened folder. In that message she had some very good and concrete suggestions on how to fix some of the biggest problems, and this inspired me to take it out and see what could be done. I applied her suggestions and then sent it to the wonderful Kaarina in Aarnimetsä, who had some further good suggestions, so I have worked on it some more. Now I am no longer unhappy with it. Perhaps it could still be improved, but I am much happier with it. Therefore I post it here, and if it changes much before it gets used for the bardic competition next month I can always post it again.
( the poem )

(OK, so I might have had a bit too much fun playing with formatting there...)