i continue to scour my files and papers to throw out a punch of stuff i have written for about 60 years or to work it a bit to see if it’s worth saving…for what? i don’t know. It’s just me doing stuff. This was something fairly recent:

Brown Penny
by William Butler Yeats

I whispered, ‘I am too young,’
And then, ‘I am old enough’;
Wherefore I threw a penny
To find out if I might love.
‘Go and love, go and love, young man,
If the lady be young and fair.’
Ay, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
I am looped in the loops of her hair.
O love is the crooked thing,
There is nobody wise enough
To find out all that is in it,
For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.
Ah, penny, brown penny, brown penny,
One cannot begin it too soon.

and me:

the brown penny rolled into San Diego ‘round eighty-two
and
then rolled into a store where stood this beautiful lady
selling panels to a sailor man
and
the sailor man
would be in love then until
till the stars do run away
and
the shadows do eat the moon
and
brown penny, brown penny,
it did not begin to soon
but
right on time.
(as Bob Dylan once said,
“And I said that.”)