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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Friday, July 29, 2022

I've been back maybe six times in 50 years

 

from this week in July, 2017 (I was 72)

 

I've been back maybe six times in 50 years

Family buildings changed hands

The one owned by my grandparents torn down

replaced with an empty lot

No relatives live there

None there likely to remember me

Totally forgotten history leaves no mystery

Petty distinctions that separated the citizens

accompanied them into extinction

Not even the prominent ghosts leave the cemetery

Five hundrded feet of snow has melted through their souls

The place I refer to as my hometown

is a mere skeleton of the one I occupied

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