amos the churchmouse: graduation daze

Editor's note: Amos is a churchmouse, who types by hopping on the computer keyboard, but he can't operate the capital shift, and he shuns punctuation marks – except hyphens and dashes.

graduation daze

boss just seeing all the

young hamsters and little

mice dressed in their

multicolored cheesecloth

caps and gowns brought

back memories from many

days and gray hairs gone by

back in sixty-six it was

and there was a song

called quotes here boss -

giddy-up giddy-up

four-o-nine - end quotes

roaring up the top-forty

mouse music charts

i remember two friends -

steve a streetwise auto

mechanic mouse and curt

a cowboy countrified field

mouse - and i decided to

stay up all night after our

graduation at bugtussle high

we made a pledge among

ourselves not to get

snookered into sipping any

high-powered sewer water

but we still had a lot of fun

driving the main drag from

the refrigerator to the

kitchen garbage can in my

shiny 57 cheeserolet

now boss bugtussle

folds up its ice-cream-stick

sidewalks at ten p m

and by midnight even the

neon lights go out on the

cheese traps

well there we were at

midnight in the bugtussle

diner listening to

four-o-nine for the

twenty-second time and

curt was dying because he

had heard his favorite song -

i walk the line - by johnny

bash the bug in black

only twice the whole night

long and the rest of the

diner s customers were about

to drag us out by our tails

running out of things to do

as well as put-put pellets

for my 57 cheesy - curt had

a brilliant brainstorm -

probably his only one all

year - to head north for a dip

in big bug lake

we grabbed our multicolored

baggy cheesecloth swim suits

and started for the lake

when we got there it was

about two or three in the

morning but we didn t

care boss

we jumped in the lake

and splashed and swam

and swam and splashed

until we disturbed a

monstrous mudcat lying on

the lake bottom

we didn t know anything

until he swished by steve s

dangling tail - then he

turned and with gaping

mouth tried to gulp down

curt and his new cowboy hat -

curt always wore his cowboy

hat even while he slept or swam

let s get outta here boys

curt yelled but steve and i

were already scrambling up

the rocky shoreline

the mudcat was mad at us

but we didn t care

in fact we stuck our little

pink tongues at him boss

as he glided by

when the excitement died down

and we stopped shivering and

shaking from the fright of

our near-death plight

we pitched our terry cloth

tents and promptly went to

sleep - having forgotten all

about our promise to stay

awake all night

two hours later the sun

struck us full in the face

and in our sleepy-eyed

stupor we stared at the

beauty of a yellow-blue-

orangy sunrise shining

all over the place

it was great boss

and then it struck us

that sunrise - that

beginning of a brand

new day on the plains -

was like god s sign and

promise to us -

that graduation wasn t

an ending but a brand new

beginning

the promise of a life

filled with beauty hope

and joy in jesus

and the bright sun warming

the little whiskers on our faces

reminded us of his promise

never to leave us but

always to be with us

forever and ever amen

amos