Tuesday, May 20, 2014

8pm

The night came faster than the day deserved;
Faster than the sun itself went down.
Spacetime, they tell us all in class, is curved;
Today it curved itself into a frown
And in that grimace shed the lazy day
Putting on instead the busy night
Whose sudden beams flash out into the gray
Not giving, as the sun would do, much light
But dazzling, and warning. In the dark
There is a danger wet and wild and fierce
Exposed with every sudden dizzying spark
That seeks the insubstantial murk to pierce.
And in that frowning danger we see naught
Except the murk itself, for we are caught.

Commencement

I saw it done, and saw it was done well
My fingers chafing from the loud applause;
What had to come has now come to excel
The expectation, and so with it draws
A pride deserved. It could not but be so;
The is were dotted, and the ts were crossed
What happened was the last thing left to go
Which could not, from the former cause, be lost.
So it should anticlimax, yet from being
There, attentive and attending it;
From listening, and most of all, from seeing
There is a satisfaction. She is quit
Of three long years, and so deserves the prize
And it was good to see with my own eyes.

Thunderstorm

I see Chicago in a giant's palm
Who with least motion could cause major harm
But for the moment still pretends to calm.
The prickle of a droplet on my arm
Almost congealed from pure humidity
Suggests what is to come, but still holds back.
Instead it rumbles ostentatiously
Of what could be, but does not let it crack
Into reality. Thus it remains
The prospect only, and therefore the worst
Neither safe from what that choice retains
Nor ended in the final desperate burst.
The giant's hand is stationary still
But we await the changing of its will.