One a Day: Daily poetry and journal posts: from the dream records

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!

Thursday, August 26, 2021

from the dream records

August 26, 1991 (I was 46)

from the dream records

In the side yard of my mother’s house in Keewatin I sit on the simple wood-frame of a go-cart made by my young son Nathan. I position myself in balance, then I fly it over the fence and across the sidewalk in front of the house. The town looks rejuvenated. The Itasca Theater is back, merchants are flourishing, a street sale is on with goods displayed. I’m at an altitude of six feet and run into Elizabeth Michelich and her daughter, Betty looking as they did thirty years ago. They are amazed, as are others on the street, to see the bare frame fly. Elizabeth says, “You should make more of those. You could sell them easily.” I know that she doesn’t understand, and I don’t explain, that the vehicle flies by will, not by any source of power. It is actually I that is flying. I take it to about fifteen feet and soar down the street.