Commencement Day

The email, a last leap for glory,
  calls for 117 of them
     to meet to pray at sunrise
        at the lake by Humanities Hall,

the two sawed-off trunks
  and the rowboat overturned ashore
     the seating for the earliest risers.
        Only three show up: the RA first

with his psalm book, staking out
  one trunk, the surfer in torn jeans
     and his twin sister parking
        half-awake on the dirt and rubbing

back sleep. The RA almost shouts
  to hear his voice skim the water,
     but smiles, combs the hair
        he slicked carefully in the mirror

and without speaking, calls off
  the prayer. His name on the email
     that went mostly untouched,
        he follows the flashes across

the top of the lake and knows,
  one more time, that stillness is right--
     that the campus has slipped
        beyond the urging of his words

and fingers, the other 115
  now in the havens of separate rooms,
     the morning with no plans but picked-at
        brunches and private jubilations.

Sighing, beaming, he extends his arms
   before the lake and lets the wind
     rush through. The twins shrug
        and toss their Bible in the truck

but linger, the glinting sun
  and water still promising something--
     some ecstasy or transformation,
        some chunk of grace stolen

from this hazy morning they set
  their alarms to see. They find it
     in the rowboat, its bent spine
        that juts up toward the sky

like a muscle flexed defiantly
  through the smashed paint and rust.
     From her pocket, the sister
        draws a single silver marker.

Her brother’s turn is first.
  Passing the pen back and forth,
     they scrawl their names and birthdate,
        then spatter the hull with the record

of their imagined last four years:
  the red-eye flights they passed on
     now taken for posterity, the offices
        not run for now chased and won,

this very lake ravished day
  after day each season, the eyes
     missing study for the swells at dawn.
        With a coffee cup’s tap, they bless

the boat. Their still-waking muscles
  turn it over and push. Through the water,
     it cuts a sharp, steady path, the surface
        closing behind it, erasing the seam.


    Published in The First Thing Mastered (Tebot Bach, 2013)