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!

Saturday, October 23, 2021

D.H.

 

October 23, 2018  (I was 73)

 

                  D.H.

Designated Hitter Lawrence in the World Series

sits in the dugout while the team’s afield

too slow and inept of glove to seat someone else

or so valued at the bat left here to think of that

which three or four or five times in the game

must batter the pitcher’s claim to fame

A hit is a single line

a double is a rhyme

If a triplem can cripplem

hitting home is the whole poem

Birthed so near the Nottingham thicket

you may have thought he’d stick to cricket

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