Graduation with Grits
Your special day arrives in May and you have smiley faces
You’ve donned your caps secured your straps and settled in your places.
Now comes the part deep in your heart that no one’s waiting for
To hear “your reach should exceed your grasp or what’s a heaven for?”
Advice about how to live your life from a balding fat old geezer
Who thinks he’s cool nobody’s fool and quite a lady pleaser.
This much we know before you go and before this day is past
You won’t recall a word at all he said would always last.
And that’s just as well 'cause sure as hell your life is yours to live
You don’t need fogies and cigar stogies to learn you've much to give.
Who needs a preacher a has-been teacher who never saw a gym
To tell you about the things that count and most went right past him?
But who am I to sit and sigh and offer my smug advice
About those who try to do or die and how to roll the dice?
Well I’ve rolled the dice more than once or twice and got knocked flat on my face
I also lost my ass to the ruling class but got right back in the race.
Then one day in May on another day I stood behind that podium
I never said things like snagging brass rings and definitely not plasmodium.
Just believe in yourself order from the top shelf and you’ll go a very long way
Kick up a rumpus don’t lose your compass and always make time for play.
Life's not about always opting out and hiding behind closed doors
Some will eat your lunch with a Sunday punch and knock you on all fours.
Better learn to fight don’t be too polite and cuss till you give ‘em fits
Just be honest and humble then if you fumble tell them to kiss your grits.
Share
Print
Save
Follow
Anna
Great poem, Edward.
Really enjoyed it and admire your afford
at writing this "manual for life", after
the Graduation Ceremony...when it ends with
graduates throwing their caps into the air
as a sign of rejoicing over their new status,
there is nothing given to them...to guide,
beside those gorgeous pictures that captured
a lasting moment....
Happy to be done with this part of their lives...
...starting the brand new life experience...would
really helped to know that..."life is not about
always opting out...." but what it takes is..."just
be honest and humble, then if you fumble tell them
to kiss your grits"...
For Aussies the "kiss your grits" connotative of
"get lost"....otherwise...will try to join you for a breakfast to "kiss the oatmeal" cereal good-by.
With warm regards Isabella.
You certainly have given us some great lines to pontificate if I ever get a chance to pontificate. That “grits” line must be a Southern thing. Never heard of before but grits do kind of taste like that.
I do recall a graduation that I attended for senior in Redwood City, California. She had just lost a classmate and best friend to an epilepsy seizure in a swimming pool so the whole graduating class was in mourning. I observed the valedictorian telling everyone how they were going to change the world while much of the class was passing joints around getting stoned. A most interesting scene.
Ron