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, March 17, 2018

Yosemite -Under the bridge


March 17, 2007  (I was 62)

   Yosemite  -Under the bridge
water sounds wash away the years
rivulets into streams into river
waterfall falls falls down sheer rock
creasing at last the stony face
the rising spires rising rising
the domes snow capped and encapsulating
the valley below the meadow the forest
the thick trunked trees trees trees
whose needles whistle then whisper

Wind plays above and behind sounds of children
Dad Dad Dad look Dad look calls
the voice of my own son twenty years ago
and I look to see him poised on a rock
in the stream about to jump to another
but waiting for another dad to look and calling
Look Dad and I look for Dad to look
thinking he’s going to make the leap anyway
and you’re going to wish you had watched

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