...you could not step.

And now, they are all gone, all those lovely men and women who've grown up in front of me for four years.  In the rush and hurry of the day--the climbing up and down our huge hill, processing and recessing, reading names and moving in ceremonious union--the melancholy of it all stays submerged.  Even in the cold evening walk back over pea gravel, past the falling flowers, down through town to the officehouse to retrieve the car, the town's quiet is not yet fully sad.  But parts of tomorrow will be strange and empty, and I will be strangely grateful to have to burrow into final papers in order to turn grades in on time.