Attention students: The future is here

The young man stood at the podium like a kid facing a mountain, under a full moon that shone on him like a spotlight.

In a way, I suppose, he was facing a mountain because it was a graduation ceremony for Skyview High School, and Ryan Eliott was poking at the future with a speech that was special in many ways.

He was talking about now and he was talking about tomorrow in a form of prose poetry that was different from any commencement speech you’re likely to hear delivered by an 18-year-old. He called it “The story of us” and began it by saying, “The story of us lies in our hearts.”

There was something in the incredible softness of the evening that seemed to lift his talk onto a different plane. One sensed a kind of magic in the open-air arena usually reserved for sports and musical performances.

Cinelli and I were at the ceremony to watch our good friend Shana, gowned in purple, walk the distance across the stage to receive her diploma, and to begin the walk of a far greater distance into the world beyond full moons and riveting speeches. I observed with pride the elegance in her demeanor and the confidence in her stride.

Everyone ought to attend a high school graduation. It’s the sobering moment when a kid begins to look back longingly at the toys of his infancy, and to realize the compelling notion of a distant horizon.

After the graduation parties, the summer trips and the onset of autumn, one begins to realize that his world has changed. Doubt creeps in like a whisper in the night, creating a hesitation in flight that for some will be temporary and for others, permanent.

Ryan was a straight-A student at Skyview High and will be attending the University of Washington in the fall to study automotive engineering. On graduation night, his message was personal. He looked into the future and, identifying fellow students by name, saw them as teachers, statesmen and even warriors. He led us with rhythms suggested by a Robert Frost poem through phases of life beginning then and evolving into maturity.

“The story of us,” he intoned, “lies in our minds.”

At each poetic interval, he reminded his graduating classmates that it was their tale he was telling by repeating the theme that was “The story of us,” at the same time acknowledging that they were about to go their separate ways:

“One blink elapsed four years;/A freshman closed his eyes and opened them/To find a tingling of sweet goodbye/Lingering in a handshake from a friend/The end of see-you-later has arrived.”

I asked Ryan, perhaps foolishly, if he had written the speech himself. I say foolishly because in grade school I had been asked the same question and it annoyed me. Of course I had written it myself. Of course Ryan had written it himself. Although science-oriented, he had discovered writing in a literature class and it filled him with its poetry. I suspect that the interest will never leave him.

But life leads even dedicated poets and warriors in many directions, and one cannot say for certain that the immediate dreams and goals that Ryan perceives in the story of them have even cast their shadows at this stage in their lives. Lawyers become writers and doctors become painters, even well after their graduate degrees are pocketed and their futures decided. Something tugs at deeper areas of our being, the something Ryan hinted at when he said, “The future consumes both past and present/The story of us lies in our souls.”

He ended his speech by once again perceiving the flicker of time that rounds our lives from high school to adulthood when he said, “The story of us rests on dusty shelves/Until Junior says, ‘Hey, Dad, is this your yearbook?’ ”

When all the diplomas were distributed and the last notes of the recessional drifted into the night, we gathered in the bright moonlight to hug Shana with our well-wishes and to watch her run, still childlike, to join her friends for a night of partying and, in their way, of saying goodbye to what had been and to glance nervously in the direction of what will be.

I didn’t discuss it with her. With the energy of the young and the eloquence of a poet, Ryan Eliott had accomplished that quite well.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez @latimes.com.