'An entrance to the world'

 

 

 “A good question is never answered. It is not a bolt to be tightened into place but a seed to be planted and to bear more seed toward the hope of greening the landscape of idea.” – John Ciardi

 

Born in Boston on June 24, 1916 Ciardi opened the door to the wonders of poetry to generations of young people who continue to study his works worldwide.  To see the breadth and depth of his poetic style, check out – Homeward to America and Other Skies,  A much sought after teacher, he directed the famed Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont and once noted, "The classroom should be an entrance into the world, not an escape from it.”  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Ciardi’s,

 

                                                 Lines

I did not have exactly a way of life
but the bee amazed me and the wind's plenty
was almost believable. Hearing a magpie laugh

through a ghost town in Wyoming, saying Hello
in Cambridge, eating cheese by the frothy Rhine,
leaning from plexiglass over Tokyo,

I was not able to make one life of all
the presences I haunted. Still the bee
amazed me, and I did not care to call

accounts from the wind. Once only, at Pompeii,
I fell into a sleep I understood,
and woke to find I had not lost my way.