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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Saturday, October 2, 2021

So many remember what it was to work

 

October 2, 2008  (I was 63)

 

So many remember what it was to work

Their bodies still wear the pain

of ditches dug and barrels lifted

chickens dressed and flour sifted

 

Cold curses from the open pit

frozen iron chunked out

of the empty holes  Musta been 1955

they struck to keep low-grade hope alive

 

Iron-poor pellets pulled from the ore

taconite taken by the magnets of Tokyo

after years of tin toys amused us

sent back to Minnesota as a Toyota

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