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, January 13, 2022

In the Pleasanton Sports Park

January 13, 2015  (I was 70) 

 

In the Pleasanton Sports Park

a line of eighty foot pines

borders a path to a playground

plastic swings slides and climbing things

Last Wednesday was windy and whistling

an exhilarating walk through buffeting gusts

the evergreen’s dance as in a tribal trance

I go wherever I blow cried a kid on the monkey bars

Round the perimeter I picked up the pace

felt the gale blast back side then face

an agitation of worked up blood

rarely felt since a Northland youth

Sudden sounds of roots up torn and cracking limbs

from back on the path where I’d just been

Children yelled the huge tree fell

but this being Pleasanton it dropped the other way

Kids laughed and took pictures on their phones

Blown away alone I stood apart

Having grown up on the realistic Range

I found the outcome strange

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