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!

Monday, March 19, 2018

In the solarium of the Ahwahnee great room


March 19, 2011  (I was 66)

In the solarium of the Ahwahnee great room
at an oak table next to the waterfall fountain
the five great windows bathe in white
it snowed heavily last night
No matter where you’ve lived
you have not experienced the scenic intensity
of This reality
It is what makes ansel adams lower case
A laden live oak sheds weighty flakes
a sagging sugar pine turned dwarf pine
Buried boundary poles and whited wire
separate one white field from another white field
The trees are not trees
they are a thick web of white
releasing a secondary storm in the gravity and warm
The place is too public for serious thought
though passing visitors are silenced by the sight
The more private side room would be as bright
but I chose this place to occupy
the same space we made a family portrait
more than two decades of snow ago
now soaked deep as the Miwok into the valley floor
And all This not to mention the backdrop
amassed granite to glacier peak
white sheathed scarps rise to limit sky
wall away thoughts of the Japanese winter
and there a more ominous view of falling flakes
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