THE JOURNAL
This old journal, started in another life.
Yellowed pages scratched with old ink.
Words written before I had a child,
Before I had a wife.
When the smell of Humboldt
Was a new mystery in my nose.
Forty years separated by one blank page.
Between where I jumped off the world
And where I landed again.
Years filled with love and smiles,
Courage, joy, blood
And rage.
A single blank sheet sums me up?
What the hell? Can that be true?
Or maybe the email they sent,
After forty years of blood sweat and tears
A single paragraph;
“For your service we thank you.”
Is a life so easily accounted for?
I’m not sure what is true and what is real.
I’m only sure of how I feel.
Like that blank page,
Lost between others,
But full of promise.
I could blame the thieves of time
With their forever muzzle flash,
That put separation between yellow paper and my pen.
But that’s not why my heart forgot to rhyme.
The blank page isn’t a story of where,
But rather of who I’ve been.
A busy man with a lovely bride
Sand beneath our feet,
Growing kids and saving lives,
Honest joy, hidden pride.
Hiring guns,
Sleeping with knives.
I didn’t make it to bed that night.
The knife was under my pillow.
No matter, everyone knows;
Never bring a blade to a gun fight.
Running didn’t work either
They knock you down with rifle blows.
Someone found where lost socks go.
They brought me out,
They shaved my beard,
They sent me fro.
Into loving arms again.
Freedom’s not as bad as I feared.
It’s all good, or so I’ve heard.
We all come back from hell sometime.
Now I hide pens under my pillow.
New life. Word nerd.
I skipped a page and wrote new lines.
But what the hell rhymes
With pillow?
j.w. McKinleyville 9/9/25