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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Sunday, July 31, 2016

A Chinese lacquered bowl


from this week in July, 2011  (I was 66)

A Chinese lacquered bowl
         passes from one to another
old men with bony hands
         from which they measure
spoonfuls of white sugar
         She enters with swift grace
a blur of perfume
         the blue porcelain teapot
blowing plumes of steam
         From the veranda she hears
water slapped onto the dry stone
         and she imagines the dark boys
smelling of hair oil and talc
         beaching their boat on the rocks
in the deep black under the trees
         stirring an unmeasurable sweetness
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