A FEW YARDS SHORT OF A POEM

I've only written a couple of things upon request. When the Prince William Sound College asked for a piece for their "Soundings" (quarterly literary magazine), I had just finished reading Dylan Thomas' "Quite Early One Morning" and was inspired to write something poetic in a prose form. Later, following the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill, when John McKuen came to Cordova (Alaska) to do a concert, I opened for him by reading this piece. The damned thing is so long, it took 11 minutes to complete. This year, someone heard a recording I had of it and invited me to a Kiwanis meeting to read it. That was cool and resulted in the sale of quite a few books. Anyway, the subject of the piece celebrated his 40th birthday with a walk through the winter's morning in that sea-sided town, still and steel-cold under the Alaskan frost. He strolled through the neighborhoods, the boat harbor, and cannery row. Next, he decides to slog his way to the top of a high hill overlooking the town.... Forty years to the day of his birth, he sought the mountain top. Ascending the encasing gray, he pounded back the forty years with long strides denying their ache.
There, he ponders "time"....On the cold windy crest there are none of those things to busy oneself in order to take no note of Time. Time, though quiet, is always just over one’s shoulder, so that in moments of solitude and reflection one merely needs to turn around to feel its dusty breath upon one’s face. Time, which disappears with laughter, work, or worry, nuisance that it is, creeps back to breathe upon one’s neck just when one forgot it existed.