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, April 16, 2022

reading some poems and other poems

 

April 16, 1973  (I was 28)

 

reading some poems and other poems

         Some poems proceed outward

from an essence like the controlled

progression of ripples from a dropped stone-

even as they diminish they intimate

existence of further ripples.

The unseen ripple becomes discernible.

         Other poems stab in any direction

lines like refracted and reflected rays of sun.

The effect is often blinding;

the eyes do not adjust until

one rocketing shaft pierces the balloon of darkness

to dispatch a map of illuminations.

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