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, September 17, 2020

(A Week Later...)

 

September 17, 2001  (I was 56)

 

              (A Week Later...)     

I climbed the hills last Tuesday knowing

the airplane drone was gone from aum,

a profound absence in a brief lifetime.

I took undistracted notice of the birds.

I was occupied by the silence.

It has long been my habit to send

a prayer of simple recognition to souls

I happen to notice in aircraft overhead.

This sky was a pure blue of emptiness.

 

It was not the sky of the new world,

it was the heaven between worlds.

Again we lost an innocence

we did not know we had;

something we’ve done many times.

Tomorrow would be the first sky

to dawn upon an unfortunate century

where warring gods prove their fallibility,

or where man reflects the gold of daylight.

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