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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Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Keewatin images a dozen years later


April 2, 1969  (I was 24)

Keewatin images a dozen years later

Be-packaged old ladies
in old country kerchiefs
metronoming up the sidewalk

Boys on ore dumps
higher than the water tower
above the dusty town

Playing guns in fox holes
dug in the woods
near the ore pit

Going to the 12¢ movie matinee
on Sunday and staying
to watch the second cartoon

Fighting over spent cartridges
ejected from guns of the VFW
after the Memorial Day Salute

Sidewalk covered with sunflower seeds
summer evening in the park
listening to the City Band concert

Playing touch football on ice skates
at night through the falling flakes
It was always too early to go home

Dances upstairs of the Village Hall
with teachers as chaperones
and the clean smell of the Fire Hall beneath

Night’s dark pierced
by eight small neon tavern signs
and a million billion stars
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