For the Class of 2015
After the planting of the flag,
the graduates enter in an
undulating semblance of order,
like a young vine climbing
a backyard fence to reach
its point of diaspora, but
the garden-marshalls arrest
their escalation, potting
them in chairs like seedlings
in plastic nursery containers,
while the announcers apply
careful labels to them all,
but when the orchestra
strikes up what might
as well be “Rite of Spring,”
the shoots burst free of their casings
in wild blue blossoming.
Copyright 2015
T. Allen Culpepper
Poetry When It Comes 