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, May 23, 2019

Certain nouns


May 23, 2010  (I was 65)

Certain nouns,
things, have parts to be named
like Henry Reed’s rifle
with its breech bolt and cocking piece
Updike’s telephone poles
with insulators and such
Frost’s wall in need of mending
with its round stones that refuse to sit
without incantation
Pinsky’s shirt buttons sizing and facing
Objects of mankind
need mankind to point out their insignificance
someone to balance the weapon and the garden
to spike the trunk of the greenless tree
to refute the wisdom of division
to set flame to the parachutes of commerce

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