Commencement

"We are shut up in schools, and colleges, and recitation rooms, for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bag of wind, a memory of words, and do not know a thing."
         ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

It is down to papers, this packing.

Then I go.

A dormitory room becomes concrete again
taking on the sharp, hot corners
and skeletal shadows of summer.

It is down to papers
and the garbage bag I’ve shoved them in
Santa Claus style, slung over my skinny shoulder,
ho ho ho…

I tell you I am scared.

It is down to papers in the garbage bag:
essays bearing As, A plusses, pride;
poems calling Torpor! Ache! Ennui!

...a love letter penned three years two months and eleven days ago.

All of it at once
irrelevant, traded in ceremony
for one final piece of paper
(also in the garbage bag).

Commence what,
exactly?