So it’s that time of year again….Grade 12 Graduation! Words like: ‘diplomas’
and ‘prom’ are just some of the things on the minds of Grade 12 students across the city. Ok, I can’t really speak from experience as I won’t be graduating for another couple of years. My concert band however, has the honour of playing for our school’s graduating class. In school, the energy radiating off the Grade 12s is infectious enough though – just walking through the halls gives me that OMG-there’s- really-less-then-two-weeks-left-of-school feeling! In commemoration of this special time, here is a poem I wrote, in the fictional perspective of a Grade 12 Student:
In the cover of darkness with the wind whispering their lonely words,
And the dark like a cloak hiding me from the real world,
I pause, breathe in the night storing every fragment of it into my memory,
Cramming and stuffing the my world as it is now, into my brain
And tonight which is yet to come.
I see everything around me through the eyes of the child
That I have been for the past years and years and years…
Everything important in its blatant honesty
Like the lock of hair, carefully curled framing the side of my face,
The shimmering fabric of my magenta dress,
The glaring light shining from my kitchen window
And the eerie stillness of the abandoned farmhouse,
On the other side of the road with its blank staring windows
Like the eyes of one that sees nothing but what is directly in front of it,
And its forlorn little porch.
I remember the previous afternoon at the auditorium,
An afternoon of smiles and tears and everything in-between
And the feeling of immense satisfaction simply for wearing
The black cap and gown and from the simple sheet of paper
I clutched in my hands like a lifeline.
How I had waited for that moment for years and years and years,
The way it came and went and the magic of the moment as it was;
Was something I would never forget.
It was as if I had reached one of the biggest milestones, an epoch in my life
And I had simply stepped over, as if it was simply a pebble.
But it wasn’t and I knew I would wake up tomorrow and be headed into
The real world,
With no direction at all,
Like a map with no compass to guide it.
One, two, ten minutes passed.
There was my knight who had pulled up,
right in front of my house,
beckoning with the beep of the car horn.
And I tried to re-think every thought,
That had just gone through in my head but stopped.
Why not just enjoy my last night of high school; the big celebration party?
Finally, as I closed my front door,
It seemed to understand the finality of everything,
For I really was closing a door in my life and opening a new one.