A Poem for a Thursday #154

John Ciardi was born in Boston, Massachusetts on June 24, 1916. He wrote over 40 volumes of poetry, the book that became the standard text for college and high school poetry classes, a translation of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, and served as an editor for the Sunday Review. He also was a regular commentator on National Public Radio and taught English at Harvard University and Rutgers University. As well, Ciardi served in the Air Force. He started writing poetry as a way to get his own children interested in reading and always thought that poetry should be accessible to the average reader.

By pothole water down a seam of time
     I walked away from Tuesday. Through my mind
a flap of crows tore from the roof of pine
     like tarpaper from a shack in a high wind.

A blue hole in a green flame, like a lens,
     picked out a cloud. I stood and watched a drift 
out of all focus. Like a secret sense,  
     a squirrel jangled in the nervous lift

 of the leaf-net that something wrong was there.
     A blue-jay squawked, "It's true!"and blurred away.
That was the last sound but the water's lain
     long rush through time - a holding silver-gray

and quartz-lit sough, like silence drawing breath
     in the age between two stars. Locked out, alone,
and with nothing to listen to but the nothing said
     by water going, I threw in a stone

the size of a brain to make one deliberate sound
     of one weighed thing in the anchorless drift. And restored 
to my humor and gravity, I walked out
     from time to Tuesday, satisfied and ignored.

A Walk Down a Mountainside
John Ciardi

Brona shared some charming poems this week.