OuSuVa09

- hello, hello, can you hear me?

- oh, yes, hi, whoa, where, am, i?

- New York

- oh. nice sky. 'd you take those photos, how'd you do it?

- yes. i threw the yellow flower in the air and it just floated.

- neat. so, what's up?

- well. you are Our Summer Vacation 2009, right?

- why yes, OuSuVa09, is what they call me.

- great nickname, very, NaNoWriMo, or FiTiFoLo. . .

- thanks. so why did you wake me up?

- you're taking us on vacation today and i wanted to introduce you to some friends

- oh.

- yes so, just look out that screen, just there over your shoulder, you can see Charity, Kathleen, Jennifer, Char, Grace, Susan (she lives West of Mars in Pennsylvania), Kay, Holly and Lucy, Melissa B., sometimes Jim stops by, Robin, Cathy, Gene, Mark, May (but that's not her real name), Dr Jay (you might know him as yoga for cynics), Jena Isle, Willow, Candy, Dave, Janet, Lorenzo, Debra, Sunshine, Lydia, Margo (although she's on vacation too) and Maggie May, Buck, Stephanie, Joann, Teresa Marty, Francis, Shaunalynn, Andrea and Anonymous.

- wow, please tell them i say hi, i'm a little shy.

- ok. well everyone, OuSuVa09 says hi. she's taking us on vacation to Nova Scotia. we'll be back in August. i hope you have a great few weeks. Thank you for reading and also, thank you especially for writing - it's how we met.

as old as the old man

I'm listening to music in the car with my son

and I realize that i'm now, by fair reckoning,

as old as the old man in neil young's song 'old
man' from nineteen and seventy-i-don't-know.

we were living in caves back then of course and

then the last mammoth died around the same

time as the day-trippers invented karaoke.

we buried it, the mammoth that is, ourselves,

along with jimi's wah-wah pedal. karaoke is

still alive - i've heard.

if you ask, we don't remember how les paul

knew how to invent the electric guitar before,

you know, before there was electricity.

there was this other song i remember, 'we can

be together,' the lyrics that were banned on the

radio go something along the lines of - 'in order

to survive we steal cheat lie forge

fred hide and deal.'

yeah and we had to eat ice too - without the

cream which was invented by ben and jerry

when they figured out how to freeze the milk

and not hurt the cow in the process.

i try telling this all to my son and he asks me,

'who's fred?'

and i'm thankful for that.

i wanted to fly

When I was a boy, I

wanted to fly.

My mother asked me,

If I thought I knew why.

I said there was something

up there to be found.

That wasn't down here,

You know, on the ground.

"Your wings are so small,"

She said, "the sky is wide open."

But my dreams were up there,

Unless they'd been stolen.

I climbed up as high as

My father had taught me,

In what I thought then, was

The world's tallest oak tree.

I jumped but my wings

Were not up to the work.

I saw myself falling,

A featherless jerk.

The sky doesn't hold you

Or let you down easy.

The wind is no help, even

If it's quite breezy.

What occurred to me then

As I flailed through the air,

Was that the sky holds our

Dreams but the sky doesn't care.

The dreams are up there just

For those who can catch them.

As for me, I broke my collar bone.

First Harvest - Last Time

Today we picked some flowers

from the garden, they were

bright like radium maybe,

like graffiti.

Jilly used the scissors her

mother gave her and cut

the stems close to the earth

the blooms fell soft as mist

she smiled, and as they hit

the ground, 'timber,' she said.