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FROM RUSSIA TO CARMEL IN 4
NOT SO EASY PARAGRAPHS |
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On this day in 1429 Edward the VI
was crowned King of England. In 1796 Catherine the Great of Russia shuffled off this
mortal coil, as did John Walter, founder of The London Times, in 1812.
In 1869 Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the US and in 1861 Jefferson Davis was
elected by The Confederacy to a four-year term. In 1869 the first intercollegiate football
game was played between Rutgers (6) & Princeton (4). Each team was composed of 25
members and the rules did not allow anyone to run with the ball.
In 1893 Peter Illiach Tchaikovsky dies of cholera (many say that he purposefully drank
unbilled water during the epidemic). He had earlier tried to commit suicide by standing in
the middle of an icy river all night, but that only gave him pneumonia. It isn’t easy
being a composer.
1923: Col. Jacob granted patent for the electric razor. 1952: The U.S. explodes the first
hydrogen bomb at Eniwetok Atol in the Pacific. 1961: The only casualty of the now famous
Bel Air fire is Kim Novaks cat, Pyewacket. No wonder she moved to Carmel.
- RM 11/04/98 |
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Sir John William Alcock o
Ken Ball o James Bowman o Dave Brubeck o Ray Conniff o Brad Davis o Sally Field o Juanita Hall o Nikolaus Harnoncourt o Ethan Hawke o
Thomas Ince o James Jones o Lance Kerwin o Francis Lederer o Robert Musil o Mike Nichols o Ignance Jan Paderewski o Jean Shrimpton o
Maria Shriver o John Philip Sousa o Simon Wiesenthal |
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A kindness started
flows forever.
No time given to work is lost.
Duty is the stuff of human existence.
There are no losers when everyone is bent on winning. |
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CLOSER WATCH |
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1.
No speeches have been written for us
and so we never speak.
But still they move in front of me.
Unmet. Detached.
What common language
could we know
I wonder.
What words of sensibility are left.
Old hellos and salutations
now snap back through jaws
as easily as they jumped out.
Conversation
if it lives somewhere
must be bitten off in Braille
or spoken in a code
but never passed
from hand to hand.
Do I sound as though
I’ve been out seeking love again ?
I have.
But more.
I’ve seen it everywhere
and I go on seeing it.
In unmarked cars
as well as underneath
a well-worn badge.
In faces not lit up by firelight
but glowing from the inside out.
I ache so much from love
I’ve seen but not yet shared
that I groan inside
not from periodic hunger
but from habit.
Breathing
other than my own
can now make any room
as painful as unanswered prayers must be
for those to whom religion is the cord of life.
Once or twice
a face comes near,
and I look up
and then look down.
2.
I am speaking here
to you and to
an unmet, unseen friend
who one day will fathom for me
yet another why.
Special mysteries
do not worry me as much
as what we do
to one another
beneath love’s seeming soft veneer
while acting out the actions
we’d have acted out on us.
Watching you rise up
on elbows at the beach
as the long, lean men
pass by in faded jeans,
I am suddenly aware of age.
Not mine, but yours.
You look to be
not fifty, but not fifteen any more
and though I’m not at odds
with wrinkles or with years
a love that grows old over night
can hardly be a source of comfort.
I know that there are kinds
of crooked looks and crow’s-feet
that modern make-up cannot hide.
And no reflected sun
however meaningful or kind
can screen away indifference
and the mind’s projection
past the now beloved’s eyes
to phantom figures down the street.
These things are all so true
that lovers know them always
without the benefit
of any prophet’s eye.
The sawdust made
by two lives rubbed together
is as useless in the cover up
of changing feelings
as the kind spread thinly
on the floors of butcher shops
to blot out blood
and drying entrails
from the housewives’ view.
At sunset faces suffer jaundice
even if the eyes
take on a keener glow.
Losing love again
causes me to wonder
if this habit is just that... a habit
not another stop
along this highway
where lately, only lately,
the end has been in sight.
Is it to be ever true
that all the lovers
meant to crowd one lifetime
will on sunshine days
become excited by what might be
instead of what it was
the first time out
that made them notice us ?
- from "Fields of Wonder", 1971 |
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