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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Monday, October 2, 2017

So many remember what it was to work


October 2, 2008  (I was 63)

So many remember what it was to work
Their bodies still wear the pain
of ditches dug and barrels lifted
chickens dressed and flour sifted

Cold curses from the open pit
frozen iron chunked out
of the empty holes  Musta been 1955
they struck to keep low-grade hope alive

Iron-poor pellets pulled from the ore
taconite taken by the magnets of Tokyo
after years of tin toys amused us
sent back to Minnesota as a Toyota

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