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, September 24, 2021

Passing Time

 

September 24, 1974  (I was 29)

 

Passing Time

My wife’s old aunts live

across the street from their cemetery plots

Quite a view

from the window above the kitchen sink

They already live in trailer homes

Actually quite spacious they say

as one washes and the other one dries

They walk over there everyday

It’s good exercise they say

and they are nothing if not ordered and regular

It’s not sad at all barely poignant 

Rather efficient emotionally speaking

I can admire that

I’d like to be buried in a hole

convenient to the digger

I don’t like fire or cold water

but I wouldn’t complain

if they took my ashes to the ocean

and threw them in there

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