Graduation Portrait

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

Graduation Portrait

Dyscostumed as a polyester monk

The graduate poses on the railway,
Then leans and pouts against an old brick wall,
And then again at the city limits sign,
Or walking barefoot on a dusty road,
And there must be a guitar there, somewhere,
And his pickup truck and the neighbor’s horse,
His letter jacket with a scripture verse,
And maybe a book that he’s never read:
Electronic images in a camera
Made in China, revealing nothing
But a tabula pretty darned rasa,
Unique, because his mother told him so,
Unique in his made-in-Shanghai jeans,
A child of God, according to the minister
Of the Adjective Fellowship of Hope

Where once he was Joseph in the Christmas play;

A target audience for Anheuser-Busch,
A tapping texter sexter flipping off
The world in a file he thinks is secret.

But in one frame he’s shyly caught in thought,

And in that accidental snap one sees
The merest hint of something that might be
Someday a man, a man who’ll stand and dare
To disobey the order of the day,
And then, wilder and bolder yet, obey
The Catena Aurea of eternity.