A Poem for a Thursday #190

Tom Hennen was born in 1942 in Minnesota. He spent his childhood on farms and then worked as a letterpress printer and offset printer. In 1972 he helped establish the Minnesota Writers’ Publishing house using a printing press in his garage. Hennen makes extensive use of the prose poem where he is able to “move freely within the rectangular tract of the paragraph.” He is said to “reveal the detailed strangeness of ordinary things.”

Like people or dogs, each day is unique and has
its own personality quirks which can easily be seen
if you look closely. But there are so few days as
compared to people, not to mention dogs, that it
would be surprising if a day were not a hundred
times more interesting than most people. But 
usually they just pass, mostly unnoticed, unless
they are wildly nice, like autumn ones full of red
maple trees and hazy sunlight, or if they are grimly
awful ones in a winter blizzard that kills the lost
traveler and bunches of cattle. For some reason
we like to see days pass, even though most of us
claim we don't want to reach our last one for a 
long time. We examine each day before us with
barely a glance and say, no, this isn't one I've been
looking for, and wait in a bored sort of way for
the next, when, we are convinced, our lives will
 start for real. Meanwhile, this day is going by per-
fectly well-adjusted, as some days are, with the
right amounts of sunlight and shade, and a light
breeze scented with a perfume made from the 
mixture of fallen apples, corn stubble, dry oak
leaves, and the faint odor of last night's meander-
ing skunk. 

The Life of a Day
Tom Hennen