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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Friday, November 23, 2018

Someone before me decided rain on my roof


from this week in November, 2012  (I was 68)

Someone before me decided rain on my roof
should not drain directly off the slant
but caught in gutters to downspouts funneling
to corners of expedient convenience and past logic
This delivery system is quite efficient
as long as there are no trees nearby
It was devised when the neighborhood was new
trunks still held by stakes below the roofline
We live among foliate monsters now
whose sheddings fill the aqueducts in every season
to decompose into mushy verdant gardens
At an inconvenient time they must be cleaned
accessed by slippery ladder moved station to station
shoveled out by hand then flushed by hose and still
there are storms each year that overwhelm the system
pour off the roof in the most direct manner possible
I consider appropriate truisms of our existence
a zen acceptance of a waterfall in the window
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