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, April 21, 2019

For nearly one hundred years


April 21, 2014  (I was 69)

For nearly one hundred years
commercial luau dancers of Hawaii
have performed a traditional program
touring the Polynesian Islands
representing each with a dance
punctuated with drums
and protruding tongues of Samoans
Then the fire batons
ignite the rum in all the mai-tais
the incense of distant memory
the fire that dances in all of us
It no longer matters how genuine the tale
the repetition has married us to the myth
The hands the feet and the motion
convey the reality of real dancers today
The smoke disappears to where it always goes
and we cheer the performance
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