Ode to '08

This won't be the best poetry comparable to Yeats, if it's even poetry at all, but I wanted to commemorate the activities that I went through in the past year that helped me grow as a person.

This I call Ode to '08.

BONNAROO
my first festival
or two
traveling to Tennessee for the first time
and driving my first Suburban

Bob Dylan playing live
"Like a Rolling Stone" with my own ears
before he fades away

Mason Jennings
in an embrace
Bob Dylan's future mimic,
saw him live
with some new familiar faces

Jack Johnson
REM
Modest Mouse
Stone Temple Pilots
Foo Fighters
Robert Plant
Citizen Cope, Derek Trucks, Black Keys,
Umphrey's McGee, OAR, Newton Falkner,
to name a few

Maya Angelou
sat on a chair
in the same room as I
as she shared her poems
from pure memory
and I felt the preciousness of life in her fragile words

My first kitten Marley
came in with a bite
and a pounce
and a hiss
and a scratch or two

Moved to my first apartment,
for real,
no college bullshit
fake life continuing

I devoured my first taste of
SONIC
and felt teased by the South--
how dare we Northerners
deny ourselves the bliss--

Tiny birds ate right out of my hand
and I flinched a few times
but I got by

To a mountain top I climbed
with soar limbs the next day but
confidence
within

I endured my first hurricane
in the South,
what so many often experience,
yet I, the outsider,
sat locked inside with wet carpets
squishing beneath my toes in my socks,
and I laughed when the trees
dipped to a right angle

I graduated college

I started a new school

I went through most of my masters
and came out with a memoir

I, wrote, a, memoir

I read it aloud to a stranger
who holds more power than me
I shook
but I read
and gained trust in another

My friend faced real issues
I struggled with her through
as her '08 is less striking
and not a smile glued

I had my first class
finally
and I officially became
Ms. Sautter

Wii
my new friend
a new experience

I discovered the library
and audio tapes

reading, reading, reading...

Augusten Burroughs my new dessert
I feast on memoirs
and The Doors and The Beatles
with a new thirst

My home
was the center of a family Christmas,
I, the host, for the first time

I ruined manicotti,
devoured too much popcorn,
discovered gin and tonics,
and shots of Bacardi Limon

Twilight became an obsession
with True Blood--
a vampire fancy I never saw coming--

The Office was an instant
pleasure
the dry comedy
like Conan
that never filled my insatiable hunger

BrrrrrI drove my first
boat
around the lake
with a spotter of course
but now I can drive it
with some help to pull it in
to the dock

Nerd
is my name
especially for Lost

I finegeled my first Christmas tree,
fake of course,
decorated without my family
but with my new

I own my first pair
of salt and pepper shakers

A pea coat fits me

My boots molded by a damp closet
and I finally let go of phsyical items

Penguins
swim around me
at my first Aquarium
dazzled by the sea life

Mike Birbiglia
made me laugh
just a few times
especially in Boston
where the Sox went down
but I saw them in their hometown

Six Flags
was my first

Boston
was my second

Camping
was definitely not my third

but the drive was sure nice

and now I sit
by a fire
in my home
with a partner
awaiting soon
a coming year
that I do not
entirely fear