We laugh upon this empty rock
We smile as we run our circles
Giggling rats
Lice swaying in unison to our meaningless song
The black ground heaves
with laughter
Let’s go waterski
above the empty sea
You’ll find me snorting and choking and twirling in a hailstorm

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.


- Billy Collins

"Small towns are fun simple living man",*
I’ve always preferred a guitar riff to a beat drop
Girls in long sweaters and nothing else
Waterfalls to shopping malls
If you watch too many movies it
Becomes obvious not all endings are optional
but,
Anything can happen around a campfire
Anything can happen on an ice cream date
Anything that ever mattered
Becomes less important than
Something that mattered
To a family on vacation, waterski enthusiasts
cyclists of mountain or road, a children with ice-cream,
Playing in safe streets An Ice-cream parlour older than your parents
Iconic
A Small diving board
a Big diving board
And    the   cliffs.
Cliffs with edges that Hunter would jump from
I would always jump in love
Rather than fall

I’m starting to prefer pony tails to job interviews
Fast speeds to failures
Motorhomes to Mazda trucks
Homemade salads to Starbucks
For as much heart the barista’s have
The salad is homemade and heartmade
Home is where the heart is and
They rarely come home with ya
where my home is not where  I always am
Its always where you can find me.
it is not my house,
but my heart
That is my home.

And boy oh boy does my heart have a big **motor!

It’s hard to imagine almost three months of unencumbered fun. My Grandmère says it’s my first summer as an “adult.” Is it funny that I don’t yet see myself as an adult?

Her “frosh-end” gift to me is a summer of anything I want (chaperoned, of course, to counterbalance the nefarious strategic significance of our femaleness) with her secretarial minions coordinating tickets, booking travel, airfare and hotels. ***, we have SO much planned.

There’ll be travel, plisse bikini-covers, gas-station sunglasses, marathon-beach-walks, bright-dense-tangerine sunsets, Yamazaki flavored snow-cones, moonlight swangin, ***-positivity and righteous gratitude to my Grandmère for all this.

And there won’t be any deterministic nonlinear systems analysis or multicellular biology quizzes.

Leong isn’t going back to Macau (China) over summer break so I’m stealing her. She’s spending her entire summer with me. In June, my parents are off, for the rest of the summer, to Poland with “Doctors without borders,” so we become untethered. Of course, all of our plans are covid or WWIII dependent and thus subject to cancellation without prior notice.

In May, I’m going to show Leong life in America, well, Georgia anyway. I’ll introduce her to my old high school crew, show her life on the lake, and teach her how to play frisbee golf and of course, how to waterski. We’re going to Braves games, to see Bonnie Raitt, Barenaked Ladies, and Indigo Girls concerts - and that’s just May.

In June, when my folks leave for Poland, Lisa, Anna, and Sunny will join us for the rest of the summer. First, we’re off to Dublin, Ireland for a few days where we’ll see Duran Duran in concert. Then we’ll go to London and shop for day three of the Royal Ascot.

Day three, at Ascot, is “Ladies Day,” when they parade those hats “My Fair Lady” made famous. We’ll table in the Windsor Enclosure (the “cheap seats”) where you don’t have to wear a silly hat (Americans don’t DO that, do we?) and the dress code is slightly more relaxed. Don’t fret though, the royal family will carriage right by us (an unobstructed 30 feet away) at 2PM sharp and we’ll enjoy champagne, strawberries and 5-star cuisine as horses run for their lives.

In January, all we could talk about were Florida beaches - but that’s not the situation now - the Florida atmosphere just seems too straight-white toxic. So we’re staying euro-side and will drop to Saint-Tropez until we go see Olivia Rodrigo, in Paris, on June 22nd.

As you can see, it’s a lot - and I can’t wait!
I hope you have big plans - make big plans - life's too short!

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.