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, April 21, 2021

For nearly one hundred years

 

April 21, 2014  (I was 69)

 

For nearly one hundred years

commercial luau dancers of Hawaii

have performed a traditional program

touring the Polynesian Islands

representing each with a dance

punctuated with drums

and protruding tongues of Samoans

Then the fire batons

ignite the rum in all the mai-tais

the incense of distant memory

the fire that dances in all of us

It no longer matters how genuine the tale

the repetition has married us to the myth

The hands the feet and the motion

convey the reality of real dancers today

The smoke disappears to where it always goes

and we cheer the performance

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