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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Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Rothenberg at midnight in December

 

from this week in December, 2011  (I was 59) 

 

Rothenberg at midnight in December

The night watchman has cleared the streets

We emerge from the smoke of the Altfrankishe

and a deliberate encounter with strangers

The cold air is good in the lungs

we exhale frost against the moon

We walk frozen stones under St. Jacob’s archway

permitted a quiet encounter with history

We follow the church shadow in the dark

as so many have done before

Peter the Rock asleep in the Garden

Moonlight falls upon the Lord in Prayer

depicted precisely at his desperate hour

We are witness with new awareness

At this time the city is ours

The chill plays upon my spine

from those other centuries

those other December nights

Those other walkers welcome us

into the niche of their granite company

I give it solitary contemplation

across the cobbles to Rodergasse

bowed to the wafer moon

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