The blessing is composed and read by students from the Class of 2008, who represent Protestant Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist faiths and traditions.

 

Cataloguing The Source

 

Somewhere a house
has built itself.
Elsewhere, potatoes
come already-stuffed.
Water, in its cycles,
seems to have always
been. Fish are inclined,
unpracticed, to swim.
People do not arrive like that.

 

We have our bodies
of course, and ids —
but let’s not split
hairs. The rest
depends upon the
weather. The stars
in a circle, line or
polygon. These might
be who we are. A mind.
A mouth. A proper
noun. A shared proper
noun, following. A
sage’s forecast. Snouts
of kindly dogs that sit
fastened outside a market.
The grocer’s, too, has
influence: its small
world bending into each
of ours. Are we changed
by two-for-a-dollar
canned pineapples
and Heineken? Perhaps
we’re moved to be
because of words we
prize and homes we
keep, the kindnesses we
choose to accept:
a friend’s, a mother’s.

 

Whose idea was it
to bulb all these things?
Who believed in the
fat seed, and buried it?
Who suspected all this
could have budded?

 

— Laura Burns, Class of 2008