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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Tuesday, May 18, 2021

My great great grandmother

 

May 18, 1971  (I was 26)

 

My great great grandmother

used to talk to any snake

who’d come wandering through the grass

Times have changed a great deal since then

but not at all my great great grandmother

Let some old rattler come up shaking his tail

like a kid tapping a penny on a candy counter

and it don’t faze her a bit

She just stands there with her hands resting lightly

on her hips and says “What do you say snake?”

and like or not the snake tells her something

My great great grandmother says

there’s a lot to be learned from snakes 

I guess I take after great great grandpa’s side

I never heard one tell me something useful yet

and a lot of people I hear

don’t pay snakes any attention at all.

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