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, August 7, 2022

I’ve been give credit

 

from this week in August, 2010  (I was 65)

 

 

I’ve been give credit

for the memory of joy

I gave to someone’s son

in a classroom thirty years ago

At one time there must have been

something actual and tangible

that was the object of that joy

I don’t know what it was

and neither does the boy

It has the same value

as a miss-remembered dream

 

I’ve helped my kids be miserable

by talking about a world and life

I could never deliver

I promised we would make it better

I said their efforts would be rewarded

that they would see justice grow from goodness

that co-operation would replace competition

that radiant beauty would be recognized as truth

Though I myself had known none of that

and should have said so long ago

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