30th Sept & 1st Oct, 2004
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Rod 4/16/04 Photo by Billy Iz
A Thought for Today
We continue to teeter on the edge. Only
lesser temptation separates the sinner from the saint.
A FLIGHT FROM6THE
PAST
29 SEPTEMBER 2001
Tomorrow the last month of this summer comes to an end. While autumn
officially began a week and a half ago there is something about
September’s end that makes it official.
Over the years I’ve written a lot about autumn; here’s the author’s
forward from my 1984 book “Suspension Bridge.” The last paragraph of it
seems particularly apt today.
Bridges
Some seasons stall or do not come. They dawdle past agreed appointments
becoming useless to the nature need and thus unnecessary hooks for
memory. Spring stays spring so long it passes summer in a lazy relay,
becoming fall or one more page of spring.
New Year’s Day will oft-times entreat the summer to arrive - the man who
came to dinner stays and fills the first six months of a given year with
sunlight hard enough to make each twig a Diamond safety match awaiting
tinder-brush and hard rock August flint.
Who forgets the winter out of season, gone mad inside America’s middle ?
Flood and twister, fist hailstones in Denver June, Oklahoma redesigned
as lake, Montana ten months digging out in hopes commencement exercises
can be held on light green field... New York with alternate complaints
of Frigidaire and turned-up microwave. California one-year haywire from
a winter insurance carrier’s blot from memory, followed by a drought
confounding television weather personalities.
For me, the fall, however ill or well it comes, is paramount. I relive /
re-enhance first romances, glory in blue blossom trees that never fail.
Ever I entreat the white azaleas in the back garden to blossom, dry and
bloom again. I am at home in autumn, rain and dour countenance accepted.
Autumn is the time when seasons merge because of bare necessity. It is a
time of coming to and going from real reality.
Every poem out of me, choosing poem cycle then stacking high enough to
be a book, has square root in seasons. Nature is not the always arbiter
- there are those seasons of the heart, the groin, dreamed vacation, and
that damp day not coming often when the mind and tongue decide to merge.
One season is guised in nature and titled Winter in America. The
other chapters are soul seasons and less structured. They are the hard
parts: the meat in them remains inside the bones. Yet like the quartered
year is a bridge to neighbor.
I have come across my country again in all four seasons. I found it to
be healthy enough... its people resourceful, big friends in good humor.
We are all of us working toward the same ends.
R.M. / June 1984
Yesterday it was Ken’s turn at the wheel so I didn’t get a chance to
wish a special Happy 55th Birthday to our resident waterfall expert Jay
Hagan. He has already retired on a cushy government pension and in ten
years gets to stick it to us all over again. This kind of larceny
couldn’t be managed better by any more deserving man. 'Cause there ain't
none.
And Wednesday too, The Blackie Twins (Nicola and Megan) added another
year. With one in Africa and the other in Europe I assume the bubbly was
shared over the phone. If I’m not mistaken Megan popped out first and
probably never lets Nicola live it down. Happy, happy young ladies,
together and apart.
Sleep warm and join me over the weekend for another flight.
RM 9/28/2004 4:15:PM
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