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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Monday, January 4, 2021

There is always a road we've not been on

 

from this week of January, 2020  (I was 75)

 

There is always a road we've not been on

just off the route we travel daily

A byway like a gravel trail we never took

until today showed its need

Not quite sure exactly where it goes

but we've been before

familiar with the unfamiliar

bumped through mud ruts

and chained across snow and ice

Afterwards snickered at our ignorant luck

to learn enough on the fly

to give another strange path a try

a different direction to get unstuck

or if needed to call a truck   

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