A Dreamy Graduation

There are thousands of people here--thousands!

Which seems weird. I mean, Hiram High's class of 1962 (mine) has only about forty graduates--yet here we are in some kind of stadium, with tens of thousands cheering us on. And there seem to be hundreds of graduates--maybe thousands.

I don't recognize a single person.

But there comes a the time in the program (how do I know?) for a kind of open-mic policy. New graduates can perform something.

Someone hands me the mic--he/she must know I memorize poems. I confidently launch into "Summer Kitchen," by Donald Hall. It's a poem I recite silently almost every day. I love it

It doesn't cross my mind that Hall wrote that poem about forty years after 1962.

I glide through the first line: In June's high light she stood at the sink ...

Then blank ... I cannot remember a single word beyond that.

Noise swells in the stadium. We're in a stadium?

I sense some classmates around me urging me to do another one.

So I launch into Auden's "As I Walked Out One Evening": As I walked out one evening / Walking down Bristol Street ...

I blank again. Nothing.

Someone, mercifully, takes the mic.

I assume the fetal position and slump to the floor. Some other new grad is singing now.

I wake up.

**

That is what I dealt with last night--the old "frustration dream" that usually deals with my teaching career: classes that won't listen, rooms full of students I don't even know, a lesson I've forgotten, a class I didn't even know I had, etc.

Last night was the first time I'd had the "graduation dream"--the first time (that I remember) that I'd dreamed about forgetting lines to poems I know.

Oh, I can't wait for that dream to come again--it was so ... pleasant last night.

Actually, the only thing that was pleasant was waking up and realizing it had been a dream--I mean, I was convinced it was really happening ...

Link to "Summer Kitchen"

Link to "As I Walked Out One Evening"