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!

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

In your lifetime I was never young

 

April 26, 1999  (I was 54)

 

In your lifetime I was never young

Yet when you were young

your eyes were not fixed beyond my life

and we looked at things together

and a common vision could make us laugh

 

That changed at a pace I failed to perceive

and it has been some time since we laughed as one

Our interests are kept in different rooms

What we see now are distinctions

in clearer focus from a distance

 

The example of my life has been no match

for the hot clarity of youth’s magnifications

Smoldering thoughts and vocal flames

extinguished to charred ash

by the searing beam of your vision

 

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