I’m in Denver at the moment, having come in to town to watch my brother graduate from business school – an event that, officially, makes me the least educated member of my family.

The graduation ceremony itself, on top of the usual array of addresses and pontifications, involved every single graduating graduate student’s name being announced, as they headed up to shake the Chancellor’s hand and receive their diploma.

This was, in short, not a fast process. So, several hours in, to entertain myself, I scawled out a bit of poetry on the back of my program:

Commencement
[A triplet, in haiku verse]

I.
Pomp and circumstance
book-end a mind-numbing line
of young graduates

II.
A sea of black robes
undifferentiated
they flow across stage

III.
I sit in the crowd
ready to stab out my eye
with a dull pencil