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.


Comments Welcome!

Friday, July 21, 2017

Touring Soudan Underground Iron Mine


July 21, 1976  (I was 31)

Touring Soudan Underground Iron Mine
Every green smile
pulled from under
the silly hard hats
issued at the entrance
tells the embarrassing truth
that we nineteen crammed
into this rumbling shovel bucket
on a cable to plummet
thirty-two hundred feet
through greenstone rock
and red vein ore
might ride this angle
all the way
to the darkest chamber
of this pyramid
to join with Julius
and his demon miners
screaming deaf from diamond bits
and pressure changes
five hundred forty fathoms
beneath an iron sea.
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