I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Friday, June 10, 2016

Volume on the classical station is minimal


June 10, 2012  (I was 67)

Volume on the classical station is minimal
Debussy’s Saint Sébastien dies quietly
Deflated puffs of musical notation
escape like bird notes from a tree
or like the wind chime of leaves and twigs
delicately differing tree to tree

I recollect and recount another
variant of my walk in the park
where I interrupt the lustful chittering
of a pair of brown squirrels in a cherry tree
They cease their coquettish flittering
to perch and watch me watching them
I see them wonder if I will keep them subdued
in this blossoming tree or if I will preferably please
move on to leave them about their cherry business.
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