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, March 19, 2022

In the solarium of the Ahwahnee great room

 

March 19, 2011  (I was 66)

 

In the solarium of the Ahwahnee great room

at an oak table next to the waterfall fountain

the five great windows bathe in white

it snowed heavily last night

No matter where you’ve lived

you have not experienced the scenic intensity

of This reality

It is what makes ansel adams lower case

A laden live oak sheds weighty flakes

a sagging sugar pine turned dwarf pine

Buried boundary poles and whited wire

separate one white field from another white field

The trees are not trees

they are thick webs of white

releasing a secondary storm in the gravity and warm

The place is too public for serious thought

though passing visitors are silenced by the sight

The more private side room would be as bright

but I chose this place to occupy

the same space we made a family portrait

more than two decades of snow ago

now soaked deep as the Miwok into the valley floor

And all This not to mention the backdrop

amassed granite to glacier peak

white sheathed scarps rise to limit sky

wall away thoughts of this Japanese winter

where ominous flakes of fallout drift

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