Editor’s note: I was going to write an actual column this week, instead of the usual poetrymaxxing I have been engaging in here recently. However, this week my print deadline has been upped five hours early because our press operator’s daughter is graduating today, so ultimately I did not find time to write anything. But rest assured: I will have a real column to share with y’all next week. I plan for it to be very heartwarming, much like a overcooked bean burrito (or is that called heartburn?)

In the meantime, here are some more poems, this time related to the subject of graduation.

The Graduate Leaving College, George Moses Hurton

What summons do I hear? The morning peal, departure’s knell; My eyes let fall a friendly tear, And bid this place farewell. Attending servants come, The carriage wheels like thunders roar, To bear the pensive seniors home, Here to be seen no more. Pass one more transient night, The morning sweeps the college clean; The graduate takes his last long flight, No more in college seen. The bee, which courts the flower, Must with some pain itself employ, And then fly, at the day’s last hour, Home to its hive with joy.

Graduation Day, Matthew Zapruder

Drawn by ceremonial obligation up from sleep I woke and stepped into the borrowed black robes all ghost bureaucrats trained to redirect dreaming pretend we do not like to wear. I drove my black car to the stadium to sit on stage and be watched watching young expectant spirits one by one with dread certainty pass before me, clouded in their names. Then listened to no one in their speeches say you’re welcome for allowing us not to tell you it’s already too late to learn anything or defend whatever accidental instrument in us causes all these useless thoughts. Like if you walked for hours through the vast black avenues of those server farms all of us with our endless attention built, you could almost feel the same peaceful disinterest as when your parents talking and smoking raised their heads for a moment to smile and tell you go back upstairs and read the book you love about myths that explain weather and death. Now it is almost June and they are finally the children they always were. So more precise than anyone has ever had to be, go forget everything we told you so you can fix what we kept destroying by calling the future.

Andrea Gutierrez is the managing editor of the Bryan County News. Poems found on poetryfoundation.org.