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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Friday, July 17, 2020

That man climbed his mountain

July 17, 1971 (I was 26)

 

That man climbed his mountain

with a prayer for a pack

and the peak rising in his eye.

He walked easily, rested where he sat.

On the first night he exhaled poison

resolved to be reborn every moment

and gravitated toward universal sleep.

 

Ascending winds of space cooled his feet,

rose with him up cold stones

to unconscious climbs,

each step exhaling past moment,

each moment a frozen blossom.

 

And as he breathed his sacred hum

under stars bursting from pulsing darkness,

the third day dawned on the summit

hot to melt his tingling skin.

Echoes of his roaring essence

entreated admission for his presence.

And as he viewed the peaks below

the mountain let him go,

finest powder with wind and snow.

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