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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Sunday, May 22, 2022

Birds fulfill expectation without obligation

 

from this week in May, 2015  (I was 70)

 

Birds fulfill expectation without obligation

Their voices are always welcome

I don’t care who they are or what they say

Conscious awareness translates even the wind

The song Sunrise Serenade evokes WMFG radio

in Hibbing Minnesota winter 1952

lying on the carpet feet against the steam heat register

The theme and title of their morning programming

music and announcements of school closings

It was the season I learned to love the crows and owls

who stayed with me while the others flew

to Minneapolis and south to Iowa

Here in Hollywood the skree of turkey buzzard

is the archetypical sound to indicate desolation

desert isolation and desperate circumstance

The owls and crows asked and answered

They give their temperate and tropical cousins

the humor of contrast in their suburban tunes

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