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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Thursday, June 3, 2021

Iron Range reunion

 

June 3; 

from this week in 1997      (I was 52) 

 

Iron Range reunion

I will not be back

for the village centennial

I entertained the idea

served it a beer and some chips

dismissed it with a nod and a wave

It’s a very small town

every corner a memory

every loss a pain known by all

I cannot live there

the weight is too heavy

for a burden so small

Those of us gone

know why we left

there was so little to offer so few

The bleak beauty of the place was mined out

the voice of mean blame

is diminished by distance

duty to change it left to those who stayed

I won’t go back now to see who did and didn’t

regarding here or there

but sometime not locally momentous

I’d walk the streets again

on an August afternoon

or a January midnight

hold hands with the past

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