This is a picture of a notebook with poems I wrote long long ago, in 1966 responding to two griefs, my father’s death in February of 1966 and my first love’s attempted suicide* in the summer of the same year.

(My feelings for the two men and events were all mixed up and intertwined; I didn’t really grieve my father’s death until I was in therapy sometime in 1982 – even then I had resisted doing so, until broken by another traumatic event.)

Here’s the original 1966 poetry notebook next to a current notebook – I still prefer this school notebook style.

After Todd’s try (you can see his name on the notebook, even though it’s crossed off) I made a pseudo attempt myself, but mine wasn’t serious, it was a cry for help, which didn’t really come for years and years. This may explain a lot about my life, (said with an lol)

This is inside the notebook and shows my writing style back then – both my handwriting and the type of poetry I write have changed, I do hope. Inside this 1966 journal are 50 poems. For some reason, I ripped out the first 4. I won’t be printing all of them, they’re all pretty awful, but for whatever reason (I don’t quite know my reason), I’ll be printing several of them and listing them below here, too – most will be password protected, since They come from my inner teen-aged child in writing; someone needs to protect her/me.

Poems from this journal will include once they’re published:
The Mourning

Apology for a Dead Man (and 2 Haikus, unrelated)

Birth of the Child

Not password protected will be this one:

Silent as an Afterthought
(though years later, I find myself wondering how silent an afterthought is)

*He overdosed on the happy pills he’d been taking all summer, on Star Island where we were working as Pelicans. Interesting coincidence, Todd was the night watchman there, the same position my future husband would have there the very next summer. Though he and I did not meet on Star, since I had not been invited back. We met at Goddard College the fall of 1967.