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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Friday, April 2, 2021

Keewatin images a dozen years later

 

April 2, 1969  (I was 24)

 

Keewatin images a dozen years later

 

Be-packaged old ladies

in old country kerchiefs

metronoming up the sidewalk

 

Boys on ore dumps

higher than the water tower

above the dusty town

 

Playing guns in fox holes

dug in the woods

near the ore pit

 

Going to the 12¢ movie matinee

on Sunday and staying

to watch the second cartoon

 

Fighting over spent cartridges

ejected from guns of the VFW

after the Memorial Day Salute

 

Sidewalk covered with sunflower seeds

summer evening in the park

listening to the City Band concert

 

Playing touch football on ice skates

at night through the falling flakes

It was always too early to go home

 

Dances upstairs of the Village Hall

with teachers as chaperones

and the clean smell of the Fire Hall beneath

 

Night’s dark pierced

by eight small neon tavern signs

and a million billion stars

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