Occasional Pieces

So far as it pertains to collecting and preserving what I feel are the best of my old writings and drawings, the time has come — if it has not passed already — to lay this work to rest. As such, I have tried to make Poems, Notes, and Drawings cohesive and readable from beginning to end. In that regard, I think of it as a book; I also see it as a kind of tea-and-coffee companion, or bedside reader that reflects the random nature of my thought process and the worldwide web. However it is perceived, I am more than content to admit that the foregoing 1,351 pages are really just a three-and-a-half-year public exercise in literary record-keeping, because that is what it is. This leaves me with but one question: what next? I laugh to think of it. I don’t know. I have never known. The only semi-sane or logical answer I can come up with is to leave the door open to writing and publishing occasional pieces on subjects I feel are important, and which I have not yet treated, or treated thoroughly enough, clearly enough, intelligently enough, maturely enough, compassionately enough, or wisely enough before. At the age of sixty-five, I am, after all, still learning, and even, perhaps, just beginning to learn. And so this is something that might be explored. At the same time, being a poet and dreamer at heart, I cannot rule out feeling my way a bit further in that realm. Poetry is, after all, an old friend; I might even say it is a childhood friend, because it has never deserted me, and has kept me living mine all of my life. Not only do I owe it everything, it is everything, in the very same way that everything is love.

January 18, 2022

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