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, April 16, 2020

reading some poems and other poems


April 16, 1973  (I was 28)

reading some poems and other poems
         Some poems proceed outward
from an essence like the controlled
progression of ripples from a dropped stone-
even as they diminish they intimate
existence of further ripples.
The unseen ripple becomes discernible.
         Other poems stab in any direction
lines like refracted and reflected rays of sun.
The effect is often blinding;
the eyes do not adjust until
one rocketing shaft pierces the balloon of darkness
to dispatch a map of illuminations
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