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.


Comments Welcome!

Friday, November 11, 2022

The Perfect Fifth

 

from this week in November, 2019  (I was 74)

 

         The Perfect Fifth

 

Not the life within but the inner life

the two are not the same

The life within is of heart and lung

the vehicle we strive to maintain

The inner life floats parallel

but may drift ahead or drop behind

Llife within feels its mortality

Inner life invents eternity

riding on a cloud

 

                  *

If a story be told in verse

make sure the story may be sung

If the tale should languish on the tongue

attempting to tell more than it knows

all that language becomes a curse

and probably better laid out in prose

 

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