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!

Saturday, January 13, 2018

In the Pleasanton Sports Park


January 13, 2015  (I was 70) 

In the Pleasanton Sports Park
a line of eighty foot pines
borders a path to a playground
plastic swings slides and climbing things
Last Wednesday was windy and whistling
an exhilarating walk through buffeting gusts
the evergreen’s dance as in a tribal trance
I go wherever I blow cried a kid on the monkey bars
Round the perimeter I picked up the pace
felt the gale blast back side then face
an agitation of worked up blood
rarely felt since a Northland youth
Sudden sounds of roots up torn and cracking limbs
from back on the path where I’d just been
Children yelled the huge tree fell
but this being Pleasanton it dropped the other way
Kids laughed and took pictures on their phones
Blown away alone I stood apart
Having grown up on the realistic Range
I found the outcome strange
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