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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Thursday, December 13, 2018

Rothenberg at midnight in December


from this week in December, 2011  (I was 59) 

Rothenberg at midnight in December
The night watchman has cleared the streets
We emerge from the smoke of the Altfrankishe
and a deliberate encounter with strangers
The cold air is good in the lungs
we exhale frost against the moon
We walk frozen stones under St. Jacob’s archway
permitted a quiet encounter with history
We follow the church shadow in the dark
as so many have done before
Peter the Rock asleep in the Garden
Moonlight falls upon the Lord in Prayer
depicted precisely at his desperate hour
We are witness with new awareness
At this time the city is ours
The chill plays upon my spine
from those other centuries
those other December nights
Those other walkers welcome us
into the niche of their granite company
I give it solitary contemplation
across the cobbles to Rodergasse
bowed to the wafer moon
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