Sonnet 32 – Closed Minds
When they are young, the children go to schools –
Industrious will take all they can get.
They keep what makes one wise, dump what makes fools –
A mind should be both filter and a net.
They’re like an ocean – many rivers come
And bring their waters to the spreading sea.
But they should grow, discern, rejecting some.
All men must measure and not mindless be.
The mortar and the brick to close a mind
Are oft applied at age too young to know
That more’s ahead to learn than is behind –
A sapling takes long years an oak to grow.
A mind should close (or else it brings disgrace)
When ev’ry piece is perfectly in place.
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photo by Michal Zacharzewski at
http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mhihuis/Brick+window%21
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© Dennis Lange and thebardonthehill.wordpress.com, 2013.
Well done sonnet & good advice as well; counts out all “perfectly in place”…
Sometimes I can count; sometimes, I can’t. 🙂
Nice to see the sonnets keep coming.
I blame him for getting *me* addicted to sonnets! 😉
I’d hate for you to go through withdrawal, so I’ll keep on. 🙂
Thanks. I’d like to write at least a hundred. 39 so far, and only a few of those have been published here.
And to *my* way of thinking, I’ll wager none of us can have it all perfectly in place in this world. You said it!
I wanted to express, but didn’t get the fullness of my idea into the sonnet, that we get older and start closing our minds somewhat appropriately because we’ve seen all the arguments or many facts or whatever it was that persuades. Still, we would do well to listen, at least briefly, in case there is something we haven’t heard before or didn’t consider.
*I*, in turn, was even less clear: I got that you were talking about letting increased learning, experience and maturity ease the door closed over time rather than starting with it closed, but if I follow that logic it does seem to me that once a topic is fully closed, it’s Finished. We have nothing more to learn. I simply find it hard to imagine in this extravagantly complex Creation that I or any human will know all there is to know about anything before it’s time to croak! 😉
K, I think we’re saying the same thing. The only difference might be how we end, whether we ever have every piece perfectly in place or not. We think we do, but you’re right about they’re being more to learn. So, the door always needs to be open a crack for a look, just in case we haven’t heard it all. That rarely happens. 🙂
Indeed!!! 😉