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, September 2, 2021

iron mind

 

September 2, 2006  (I was 61)

 

         iron mind

The empty cars come round the bend

The engine passed here long ago

and the train moves so slow

we convey raw ore as she goes

It pounds the metal and rocks the cradle

sends up a halo of bloody dust

Off it goes to where heaven knows

its tailwind blows our hair to rust

Iron from the ore is the final score

and the miner tallies next to zero

His kid keeps hid the jobs his daddy did

thinks his football coach is a hero

Miner to refiner and iron to steel

heat from the furnace a part of the deal

names are lost before the product is sold

Steel usage is cold  Don’t tell me

how or from whom it came to be

just give me its logical functionality

 

first published in Around The Corner, 2008

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