The final final

I had one last chance to earn a grade, after five years of working toward my MDiv.
The assignment was called a self evaluation.
It is my best attempt at what the professor required by way of explanation as to how I had interacted with the readings, lectures, classmates.
It turned out much more like a goodbye than I had intended but sometimes a corny title is just the thing for a poem I am proud of.

Saying Goodbye
The birds asked me to dance but
I know they are better suited to fly.
They passed over and told the mountains not to weep, sang them to sleep until
The clouds above them froze
Amply against winter’s invisible edge.
Their pebbles begged to be
carried home—knowing
they are pieces of places
We have been together.
I explain it to the tiniest ones this way:
“You may come to know
It will cost you an ocean,
A species of tree and your old way of listening
To the sounds of rain,
You may come if
you wish to see.”
The dandelions (yellowed teeth flutter) in a southbound wind,
The rhythm of tides beat rocks left to right themselves.
“You may come to find
there are lightening bugs and thunder storms, equally a-fright.
And the grasses grow jealously all year staring
up with the emerald eyes of spring.”
They answer,
Growing is a movement,
and stumbled,
One more salutation.