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2nd & 3rd October, 2004
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Rod 4/16/04 Photo by Billy Iz
A Thought for Today
The years may take our friends and test
our faith but it cannot erase our memories.
FROM the¨BOOKS
Three Poems from “Suspension Bridge”
The Voice of Independent Means
Stars,
if I could read you then I would.
Life goes on forever,
youth lasts an hour, maybe less.
As the gangplank comes in nearer
I speed away behind an engine
warming up, left running.
Could I erase the deficit
and start again
I would not.
The beast too listens in the dark
for words that will not come,
is frightened by the stars
and goes off running
like the rest of us.
All out there, stars and signposts
voices too in twos and threes,
I know you are not enemies,
but friends
not yet so labeled
and collected.
Twilight passes like the tide
all hushed and strange.
We only see time’s changes
when it is late and growing later.
Gabriel does not rejoice
at each new crowd
he only waits.
Oh lover, singing
out beyond the wood
do not bruise me with false cries.
Lullabies, lullabies,
sing me only lullabies.
Yours is the only song
that soars above the rest
and yours the only voice
of independent means.
Stars I’d reach and pick you
if I could
and ancient, newer loves
I’d do the same.
We’ll all go home when winter comes
for now the seasons will not change
they are a shawl of ribbons, paper, rags
a willow dragging branches in the water.
Those voices and that voice
still singing in the not so wilderness,
still offering a song so sweet
that all the stars now take it up
and pass it down and on to us.
Comes the Colors
We prop old dreams against the wall
colors of the new-found day and night
our lexicon.
To each his own sweet tongue, I know,
but let our budding language be
not one of shadows but of shades and hues
drawn from that great roulette, rainbow wheel.
Armed with vivids, not with grays
we will hunt, track down and bring the old
to new reality.
Apollo has no lesser temple than shy Venus,
only different highways lead us
to her hideaway.
As war is but a breath away from peace
so too contentment is the last door entered.
What colors.
What stately and barbaric hues
the unexpected summer in midwinter brings.
It is the night wind once more pianissimo
soft-pedaling its wares.
What splendid cloth, what merchandise,
kaleidoscopic sunsets twice around.
Go gingerly.
Or better still, come, go with me.
Our ears have always heard like music.
-from “Suspension Bridge,” 1984
Hope your weekend comes off as planned. Sleep warm and join me Monday
for Ask Rod.
RM 10/1/2004 6:10 PM
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Saturday 2 October
Bud Abbott o
Lorraine Bracco o
Clay Felker o
Peter Frankel o
Mahatma Gandhi o
Graham Greene o
Moses Gunn o
Ayumi Hamasaki o
Paul von Hindenburg o
Donna Karan o
George "Spanky" McFarland o
Groucho Marx o
Don McLean o
Rex Reed o
Wallace Stevens o
Sting o
Tiffany o
Maury Wills
Sunday
3 October
Gertrude Berg o
Erik Bruhn o
Lindsay Buckingham o
Neve Campbell o
Chubby Checker o
Eddie Cochran o
Pamela Hensley o
James Herriot o
Kaci o
Tommy Lee o
Warner Oland o
Emily Post o
Steve Reich o
Madlyn Rhue o
Kevin Richardson o
Gwen Stefani o
Stevie Ray Vaughn o
Gore Vidal o
Eric Von Detten o
Jack Wagner o
Dave Winfield o
Thomas Wolf |
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Live, but never attempt to direct life.
Passion makes its own perspective.
Love makes the bashful beautiful and gives
the awkward grace.
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DOSTOYEVSKY LIVED HERE |
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Images compound.
You threaded traffic,
head above the walkers
on a Monday winter day –
your stride and gait
as though in purpose,
when you were only strolling
to be strolling.
I think of you in motion,
always.
Never languid on a couch with bonbons
or prisoner to television
after supper
and the dishes.
The dozens of you in every hour
afraid of what you'll miss
while not revolving.
I see you running,
eyes at constant blink.
The head inside the skull
in narrow roll.
Brain ever working,
left to right, head to front,
no cell
celibate.
A smile always,
or some other decoration
that will not leave your face reposed.
Your arms go 'round me
and even then adjust.
Busy fingers.
Your hands at times at needlework.
Writing letters. Sorting papers.
Jigsaw puzzling.
Stroking Sybel, our first cat.
and at the window box
you water in a pattern
that the plants appreciate.
In a hurry always,
to and never from.
Ever tiptoe poised atop a ladder
at the topmost bookshelf
rummaging but little through the volumes
since they are stored and catalogued
in secret thought.
Your lips part not so much in conversation
or the yawn
but more in silent thinking.
Perception bubbles to the surface
but every sentence is commuted
before it finds its oral frame.
I see you. Often are you here
in steady glide.
You float and sift through afternoons
that hurry with you.
The two of you impatient for the night.
Motorlike, without the noise.
Ferris wheel, sans calliope.
Metronome. No clicks.
You are clockwork without time.
And yet nerve endings never show.
Your gait is more the music box
that needs no eyes to be appreciated.
I watch afar at times
and do not enter in.
But when I ride the carousel
I ride with you in sync.
Observer, I am only that–
no pressure to be up and in the circle
as you do autumn acrobatics.
You somersault in summer too.
No season and no hour favored.
Abed you take your ease alive.
Love does not pass between us
it comes shuffling.
Arms and legs and eyes converge.
Never, never hammer-like or slithering,
above the bed we sail
not caught in pillow.
We do not copulate, we flow as river,
no finish line or starting gate–
no end
and not beginning.
I am a third
that sees the two of us at love
as if reporting to the city desk.
One mouth between us over there
how can we breathe?
Air flows in and out of us
as fair
as air is fair.
We are each other's wheel
and axle well aligned.
I know one is the common noun
in lovers'
conversation,
but looking on at distance
I see us onelike and no other way.
It all comes rushing to me in a rush
hill
the
climb
to
begin
I
As
these decades later.
Perfect, unembellished memory.
I'd lay at rest
what I dredge up each day
if I were
able.
I am not.
I go hiking Stanyan Street
as if to crystal thought.
I must be seeking punishment.
There is no perfect peace or crime
while time is arbiter.
A child's balloon, bright red in color,
floats heavenward
until it's but a dot, then nothing.
Somewhere off beyond it's magnified,
becomes a globe.
So too the thought
that feeds upon itself grows larger, rarified.
-from “Suspension Bridge,” 1984 |
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