Aphorisms for Graduates at a June Commencement
by Tom Daley
You will be remembered
as sustainable skirl, as focus
blending quietly into fearful
beige. Your requirements outdone
by oaks that stood the rain
and willed it
where carpenters seeded
their own superfluity.
Accomplishment is a hinge linking
consequential to fretful.
These are the small infrastructures
of abandonment, of tears
confirmed, of whistles
shivering in bioluminescence,
of sighs hurled like mortarboards
over bated poise
and teetering platitudes.
These are the shrewd butterflies
that alight on the podium,
a tardy marvel conferring
distinctions on a case-by-case
basis—like you, tempted
to bound and reach far back—
and burgeon.