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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Monday, May 30, 2022

Anniversary of My Father’s Death

 

from this week in May, 1967  (I was 22)

 

Anniversary of My Father’s Death

 

If after my dissolution

Another life shall be,

I must confront my father

To see what part of him is me.

 

We both were young for death

So now we would renew

With mellowed eyes the expired years

In a consummate review.

 

But if (and more likely so)

The grave grants no volition,

I’ll lie cold and stiff and still

And rot in ancestral tradition.

 

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