Continuing Education
It’s true that school is great for teaching gerunds, nouns and clauses.
Also for the how-to-do’s, the whens and the becauses.
And so I don’t regret my years in university
learning of the human mind and its diversity.
Couplets, sonnets, iambs—their knowledge served me well.
Chaucer took me to Canterbury. Dante? Straight to Hell.
Will Shakespeare gave me standards of wit to try to mimic,
and modern poets formed my taste from Oliver to Simic.
But where I really found a classroom that appealed to me
was after school was over, when I was finally free.
Backpacking was geography: islands, mainlands, seas,
and I learned my geology rock-hunting on my knees.
I learn a little bit of life from everyone I meet—
the art of speech in barrooms, diplomacy in the street.
Biology from baby birds fallen from the nest
and taught to fly from towel racks, their wings put to the test.
All the art I ever studied simply came from looking—
geometry in midnight skies, chemistry in cooking.
And though the internet gives facts in every form and guise,
It’s life that serves us best because it’s life that makes us wise.
The prompt word today is educate. This is a rewrite of a poem written over two years ago.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Oh so true!
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Education is a life-long endeavor, whether in classrooms or in actual practice. I think I’ve learned more in the last 13 years than in all the years of school and work that came before that! A good post!
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Thanks, Janet. Take it easy packing.
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Thanks — I made good progress yesterday, despite the sticky heat! More today, and it’s cooler now/
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Definitely. We’re all still learning.
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I never took a writing class. I took basic history and the rest I learned by reading. But I had a blast in college! It was FUN discussing the meaning of life with a bunch of kids who had never lived.
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Ha. Yes. We were so wise.
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And now I want to see a baby bird take off from a towel rack! And you’re right – lessons are learnt from life.
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I have a photo on an old hard drive but would be hard-pressed to find it, Val.
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I never took a committal to writing course.
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