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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Sunday, July 29, 2018

I’ve been back maybe six times



from this week in July, 2017 (I was 72)

I’ve been back maybe six times in fifty years 
Family buildings changed hands 
The one owned by my grandparents torn down
replaced by an empty lot 
No relatives live there 
None there likely to remember any of us 
Totally forgotten history leaves no mystery 
Petty distinctions that separated the citizens
accompanied them into extinction 
Not even the prominent ghosts leave the cemetery 
Five hundred feet of snow has melted through their souls 
The place I refer to as my hometown
a mere skeleton of the one I occupied
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