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.


Comments Welcome!

Thursday, August 27, 2020

Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty (2)

 

August 27 

 

   Reclining Lady of Six-Eighty  (2)*

The fabric of the canopy overhead

and lie of bed clothes around her

varies with the morning weather

and colored light dawning over her knees

 

I have turned to look upon her hidden

under a silvered veil of sheet

forehead, shoulder, knees in silhouette

slumbering in fog of sleep

 

And I moved that morning in sleepy fog

about my business with underlying hint

of familiar form beneath subliminal cloud

and rounded edges of reality

 

The perfunctory memory of the hand

working routine daily tasks

frees the mind to drift in search

of a familiar naked form

 

*From a series written from 1998-2001 (I was 53-56)

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