Autumn sestina

The keen blue wind heralds the start of fall
and I blow words to try and find a story,
a worthy frame, an offering of faith.
My Lady's patronage requires this price
to justify a blessing on my studies
and so I write, to pray, to settle fear.

It binds my chest like bandages, this fear
of missed potential, lost in the trickling fall
of sand within the glass. Outside my study
life laughs at being taken for mere story.
Does not each ignored moment bear a price?
How can I speak--or not speak--of my faith?

And She who is the home of all my faith
sends no false comfort: "Life is made of fear,
anxiety for future, regretting action's price."
In every choice, a misstep. And from the falling
grains of time, a half-seen bit of story--
a mandala? Or trash heap. This, I study.

Again: can there be shape, divorced from study?
No form can be discerned without the faith
that something's present--someone tells this story.
I oscillate between these polar fears:
absence of sense in the events that fall,
or wrong sense, carrying an equal price.

So miserly. I cringe at every price--
dithered seconds could be spent in study--
She stops me; and she thus transforms my fall
Into a step. Fall, catch. I walk by faith;
how is unknown. It's not for lack of fear
but through it, that I can form this story

and no other. I have to live my story,
to leave the cliff, prepared to pay the price:
both kneeling to, and yet rejecting, fear.
Accept that only questions come from study,
but every wisdom glorifies Her faith.
To withdraw--not to wither--is the work of fall.

Lady of fall, help me to pay the given price
of taking stories as my course of study,
to walk, faith catching at my stumbling fear.