Sometimes a fellow just doesn’t have much to say. Of course, it’s probably got something to do with yesterday. I donated blood again, or more specifically half of it was plasma and the other half red blood cells. My iron count wasn’t high enough to give double red blood cells so they determined half of that was what they’d take. Whatever the decision, the process of being a donor always steals energy from me, so today I’m dragging around like a lazy dog. However, I still look on it as my little way of payback to society, so I plan to continue doing it. I’ve received blood transfusions on two different occasions in my life, and I won’t forget that somebody had to donate it for me.
I keep working at my second book and search for inspiration under every rock. It goes slowly. The problem might be that I’ve already started the third volume in my head, a fact which detracts me from the one at hand. The third one with have a unified theme, while this one as well as the first one I published bounced all over the place with poems of whatever took my fancy. The last piece I completed starts with this stanza:
Every small town bar has one, an unprincipled expert
of political issues, a verbal bull who will gore
and skewer his opponents with his horns in a quarrel…
I had lots of fun writing that one, and I only had to go so far as to dip into my own barrel of experience to dredge it up. The third volume’s theme will concern the early transportation enterprise that cut trails through my home territory. It’s a good story, and I hope I can do it justice.
