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!

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

The Cow in the Road

 

from this week in January, 1976  (I was 31)

            The Cow in the Road
Hello.
Welcome to your real life
(remember the other

the one with the golden hair
the one on the rocks by the sea
and the wind and the wave

that broke in trembling tetrameter
o’er myriads of naiads
gamboling upon the shore)

All that’s given way to tap dancing
up and down the stony steps of Sproul Hall
and all kinds of other groovy things

All that ended when the war did
All the soldiers were underground
waiting again to inhale the smoke and breathe the fire

Then came who cares leading up to now
and the ha ha of personal commitment
sitting on its own lap on our doorstep

saying its been there all the while and somehow
that has to be the truth and suddenly you know
you’ve been to the beach again

and there’s an oh-oh from the basement
and a rustling in the woodwork
and memories of the night the bats were loose in the house

But then all those things went by
not for everybody, but at least for us
We didn’t know the beginning

though we kept on surviving the end
and we will until one of us
fails to recognize the cow in the road

No comments:

Post a Comment