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, August 25, 2019

The Shadow Puppet Theatre


from this week in August, 2016  (I was 71)

The Shadow Puppet Theatre   (a work in progress)

The shadow puppet theatre
cast upon the walks and lawns
presents a new production daily
directed by the wind moving leaves

Negatives of movement projected below
To see it as representational
may miss the point
Anything interpretive is an imposition

Eyes are unreliable receptors
Seeing should not be believing
The mind seeks shape
patterns seen against closed eyelids

Once recognized form persists
just as sub-atomic particulars
called into being when sought
Items in the bay we didn’t know we bought

Just the other day
I watched the shadow puppet monkeys play
before behind and in between
the foreground and background screen

Movements defined by their shapes
animate the little apes
They bend bound stretch and descend
Three sit together on haunches

pausing together on lower branches
Darkened eyes do not see
Covered ears do not hear
their unuttered sound most profound

Having discovered the play of the monkeys
many look for nothing else
Imposing interpretations obscure
the other actualities blown in

In the shadow puppet theater
sets change with the season
The best productions
appear without reason.

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