I received this poem from a reader and early editor. He was inspired to write it after reading my initial blog post. Share your thoughts and reactions to the poem or offer your own inspirations.
lesson plan
this often tired, tortured soul
wanted to reach you,
shake up and release you
from daily drill and distant duty:
"a b'c's" and fill-ins guessing and disguise -
playing tawdry, tired tilted games
while magic slept inside;
to shake the stodgy lamp of learning
ignite our souls
with a wild will to learn,
daring immolation;
to question, quarrel,
not just simply color outside the lines
but to obliterate the page;
to create, not compromise,
not plant a single, simple seed for future reaping
but to become Whitman's multitudes,
a dense be-fruited forest of possibility;
not memorize the lives of others
measures by a pithy phrase,
but perchance to dream - the Bard's command-
and dally in imagination's boundless land-
melody, magic, time.....
to wonder and wander
consider and critique
demanding more fuel for the
forever fire of learning and life;
to indulge in intellectual intimacies
that meander in a wilderness,
a whimsy of ideas.
For you to find you and be you,
and all to bask in that reflection,
a fun house filled with different mirrors
divinely deviating in each glance,
showing all, inviting all,
beyond books and basics
- the drone of daunted devils -
and to fly
off a springboard, high and harrowing,
into possibility;
to lose contact with the fetters
of tired, tortured souls,
be sacred and serene
suddenly supra and super and
free,
and me
to watch you dive into
the measureless, grade-less ethereal waters
of all there is to love and learn,
ecstatically swim and swim away...
dismissed.
by M. Musante