Alex on the last day of school

Sonny, you are right at the edge.
This summer is given to you,

hung around your tan neck
like an Olympian’s medal.

For all the afternoons that you sat,
quiet with your books -

a word worm,
young philosopher -

remembering four years of lessons,
combining them to make

a volume of riddles,
delivered with clever expectancy

and perhaps an excess of sobriety -
a need to be taken seriously, even in jest.

So, outside is dusty sunshine,
promise of an endless respite

and here in my nap house
your clean, white socks rest

on the cushions of my Swedish couch.
You are bored, but optimistic.

You brandish your neat row of early letters -
A’s and B’s that announce your realized potential:

You can rise above the turmoil
of a fragmented picture frame.

You are worth over a million words,
more than a mere merit;

augmented by the extra letter of reference
tucked sweetly by –

the unofficial with the certified,
both of solid value.

So, this is the content of your pack -
a year’s hard work summed up

in seven bent papers and a book
of head shots whose names will ever be

embedded in the synapses of your mental corridors,
though you may capriciously scratch them off the page.

Not just work – experience. Social forays,
physical testing, the ultimate feat of overcoming.

I am trying to see you as a peer,
to remember who has ever been like you -

Handsome and awkwardly funny,
sugar cane brown and a smile like an epiphany.

I am tempted to find your strata, your niche,
but you are worthy of so much more.

Juvenilia should get its sticky fingers off you.
Even your vices are pure

in the light of the future
and the inevitability of growth.

(c) 2007 Tasha Chinnock