A Poem for a Thursday #281

John Ciardi (1916-1986) was born in Boston to Italian immigrant parents. His family saved enough money to send him to college and he graduated from Tufts University. He went on to complete his MA at the University of Michigan. He was awarded the Hopwood Prize for his poetry collection, Homeward to America. Ciardi is particularly known for his translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy and for a book on how to read, write, and teach poetry entitled How Does a Poem Mean? He was also an etymologist.

Morning glories, pale as a mist drying,
fade from the heat of the day, but already
hunchback bees in pirate pants and with peg-leg
hooks have found and are boarding them.

This could do for the sack of the imaginary
fleet. The raiders loot the galleons even as they
one by one vanish and leave still real
only what has been snatched out of the spell.

I've never seen bees more purposeful except
when the hive is threatened. They know 
the good of it must be grabbed and hauled 
before the whole feast wisps off.

They swarm in light, and fast, dive in,
then drone out, slow, their pantaloons heavy
with gold and sunlight. The line of them,
like thin smoke, wafts over the hedge.

And back again to find the fleet gone.
Well, they got this day's good of it. Off
they cruise to what stays open longer.
Nothing green gives honey, And by now

you'd have to look twice to see more than green
where all those white sails trembled 
when the world was misty and open
and the prize was there to be taken.

Bees and Morning Glories
John Ciardi