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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Saturday, July 16, 2016

That man’s gold


July 16, 1974  (I was 29)

       That man’s gold
All the nuggets collected by that man
as a form of insurance
a security against prospective boredom
and held in a leather lung
a breath away from a fear of suffocation
All these he carried back into the mountains
to be replanted one by one or sprinkled in the current
His comfort grew and his joy flashed downstream

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