each of my poems is a commencent address,
depending on the day, the time or place,
either an ending or a beginning

a moment unique, we mark a changing,
by tossing/losing a hat we’ll never wear again,
or picking up a shovel to bury a parent
in earth and casket we cannot share

an operating room, shiny clean, with mercurial microbes
awaiting a new arriving inhabitant, to defend and attack,
or bidding farewell to a elder child born blood-deformed,
whose wingspan shortened by virtue of our own gene-rosity

commence the commencement.

take the iron from the grotesque irony,
the steel from the stealing away seconds,
the hum from the humble mumbling,  a disbelieving refusal,
the tears from the skin-rent tearing just
beginning a speech for the occasion and
ending with a prayer standing, by a gravestone

when you awake today, prepare a commencement
or a commence-not address