For my granddaughter, Samantha Rose Hart
	Graduation - Quinnipiac University
	May 14, 2023

It would be a foolish mistake
to think them invisible…or worse.
	-joy, compassion, love, commitment, accomplishment-

When they are, as they are now,
in full bloom directly in front of us
they are as alive as a child
running wood-paths as fast as she can
guided by the elation of 
her own fledgling joy.

Herds of Academic Regalia
criss-cross the country this time of year.
Murmurations buzz the troposphere,
and the Coriolis effect muddles our brains 
with its only trick-
though it’s a good one.

Weren’t you just standing still
(or so you thought)
when the wild hoodwinks of the Coriolis effect
flew by and inverted your years,
threw them out into the air,
and you wobbled left or right 
for a better vantage point
of the illusion of aging backwards.

Terrifying and jubilant and phantastic,
messages which in the end will cover us,
me journeying back on the trail from which I’ve just walked, 
and you, passing me, striding in the other direction.
I have lived long and done all the things you must still do,
and you…you are entering a great land of surprises
and achievements – that is where you’re going now.

For that sole moment, that singular crowding
of the intimate air, the finale has become 
the embodiment of love and ecstasy and realization.
Careful not to disturb one particle of this minutiae
of crafted rejoicing. I draw an invisible line with my finger
down your cheek, from your ear to your mouth,
signifying that one or both of us will say, 
almost out loud, almost at the same time.

I love you so.
                        

The front passed last evening  
after weeks without rain,  
weeks where the yard lay wounded, 
brittle and emaciated. 

The weight of the heat was
despotic and in the shallow
narrow valley
blue jays put us on notice;
This was not going to be good.  
Be prepared.

But they were wrong.

Heat’s shoulders began to hunch-
woe-is-me-quitter - 
sure of nothing but its own  
concocted confidence. 

Mugginess bullied everyone, 
making us slog slowly back to our seats 
where it shoved us down  
without concern or consideration.

And then…the front came through
and transformed the world.  

On the radar a thin green line swirled
while the yellow of the real world’s receding air,
tinted by agitated sunlight,
staggered quickly into the shade of the woods,
leaving behind a kaleidoscopic fantasy 
of a yellow and green terror-scape,
with an imbedded thunderstorm and its one red eye. 
  
Just after dark a few drops hit the parched deck,  
rain’s perfume became abounding.
The landscape turned itself inside out,
leaves raised their voices again, 
and down the hill  
the silhouette of my neighbor 
carved into the dusk,

flapped his arms above his head
as he called out Yessss!

Me, bare feet on my wet deck,  
called back in the rain, Yessss! 
as the heat, its one good leg splintered,  
skulked swooning into the valley.