It is true what Kate said to you, “don’t worry about losing anyone . . . everybody passes by the tables in front

of the big barn.” In fact the Vineyard summer leaves

by the same path. Mothers, fathers, young children teens, grandparents, singles, lovers all come and go.

Smiles laughter frowns all walk together at the Fair.

A young girl with a broken pick up stick jabs at debris.

Her partner of 11 holds a plastic bag for her, both run off.

A baby I call Buddha is strolled to the sheep shearer

who struggles a bit with a sheep new to this shearing,

who when released to his flock he is not recognized by the others. The lambs of mother sheep shorn nurse her wool.

Lambs, piglets, kid goats, miniature horses call to the

Young onlookers from their pens “see me, see me.”

Two draft horses, one black one blond, resist in vain

the yoke of the large wooden carriage which

will be filled with children in several minutes and

you wish you were eight years old again.

Where you sit a toddler with a twist of blondish hair makes her short booted mother chase her like Runaway Bunny.

The Ferris wheel lifts up the fair ground in the peachy

sunlight of a perfect day at the Fair. If you can’t be happy here, you probably can’t find happiness anywhere.

A boy of six years eleven months learns to say goodbye

to places and events he loves, follows his mother to the car barely able to carry an outsized “Alien”

balloon he won as his first prize at the wonder filled Fair.

He will remember a boat load of vegetables, flowers, quilts, even the miniature trees, most most of all however, the rides.