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TUESDAY
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Rod &
Kubby. Photo by Bob Gentry, ©2002 by Stanyan Entertainment Group.
A Thought for Today
Genius seldom meets deadlines. Success nearly always does.
FROM the¨BOOKS
SATURDAY NIGHT To see them dance
is always such a marvel
whether they run down
the length of Strauss
or stand in place for Stoney End.
Their motions are as fluid
as a kind of liquid neon,
even on a floor so crowded
that each of them appears
to be the other’s
next of kin.
The dancing
like the darkness
has no starting place
and seemingly no real end.
If you come here
three nights running
you begin to feel
the night starts only
with your arrival
and stops as quickly
when you go.
I wasn’t dancing
but I wasn’t standing still.
I wasn’t hunting, but I hoped.
New Year’s Eve did not fill up
the forefront of my mind.
I didn’t need tomorrow
only now.
Maybe I stayed longer
than I’d planned
for with the music
and the lateness of the hour
before I’d finished living now
I was driving through tomorrow.
Later on the street
the last fall leaves
were flying through
the railings
to float
along
the
dark
canal.
Another evening maybe:
with the winter dead ahead
I had three dozen nights
lined up and waiting
no different than the one
I’d just come through.
I could be content
to walk back slowly
and finally slide down into
the same safe security
that only hotel beds afford.
Knowing that it waited
empty in the darkness
my footsteps quickened.
- from "Moment to Moment" 1973,1975
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Dan Blocker o
Kenneth Branagh o
Randall 'Tex' Cobb o
Susan Dey o
Emily Dickinson o
Cesar Franck o
Harold Gould o
Morton Gould o
Chet Huntley o
Dorothy Lamour o
Gloria Loring o
Dennis Morgan o
Richard Oliver o
Nia Peeples o
Tommy Rettig |
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To conquer the fear of failing you need only remain open and
willing to succeed.
In choosing a path in life always select the
most challenging. The easy road is crowded and boring in the bargain.
Luck lies in bed waiting for the postman to
bring news of a legacy. Success is up at six a.m. and off to work.
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MORNING COLLECTION |
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In the
half-light
we saw the swimmers
coming from the darkness
carrying the boy’s body low,
as though its weight
was bending all of them
into the same submission.
As though the boy
was pulling them down now
the way the sea had pulled him
to herself.
He was of course
just one more lover
of the gray-blue water.
A muscled boy who swam
a few yards farther out
each day.
But so young.
I wonder what he said
as he went down
that final time,
here I am or let me go ?
I know the sea eats up
the men who love her most,
the way a killer queen
must finally one day
reject the troops
who fought for her on battlefields
and fought with her in bedrooms.
I am not afraid.
I’d go down gladly in a whirlpool
if I had ridden all day
on a
friendly wave.
But one so young
colorless, not even gasping,
too dead for even lonely.
A conscience cannot even wonder
why.
For the sea
it was a little murder
done with might and yet no malice.
But with a poor repayment
for a man whose only crime
was to love the wild blue water
that in a single swallow
tore and took him.
The ocean has a lesson
for our own lives
and those we take responsibility
toward.
Push forward she keeps saying
till your life is bare upon the shore
until you’re naked to yourself
and God.
Yet the Christian and the Godless
are often washed together
and broken on the rocks.
To wade the water is to learn.
You’ll gain a guideline,
a seamark telling you
how far to travel.
If the sea were not
a woman
we’d have little luck
at concentration
and communication
and still come home in certainty
and safety.
Morning people
tracking down the shore
retrieve the best
and see the very worst
the sea sheds on the beach.
Hold on to me
and I’ll become your enemy,
let me go and I’m your friend.
The ocean says that every day
a thousand and a thousand times.
And every evening,
her words having pounded
in our heads all day,
we repeat them
to each other
as our own.
So it is
that we confuse her speech
her language spoken
wave to wave
and tide incoming
with those sentences
complex and simple
we spit out
as dialogue invented.
The sea invents,
we rearrange.
The sea takes out a patent,
we infringe.
The sea holds all the rights
to all the most important works,
speaking tongues that even time
won’t modify
or use.
To those of us who’ve listened
the sea’s the only teacher
teaching, and without a copybook.
Often she demands a bitter prize,
a head to batter on the rocks
limbs to wash upon the shore
and though we wonder why,
is it the only question
that she leaves unanswered?
Some of us are only
treading water, hiking sand
beach to beach
and not beyond,
pretending we’re the sea’s
extension
hoping we can pass it off.
Though we seldom do
we go on trying.
Riding out the rainstorms
when we can.
Fighting off the fog
with friendship,
sailing through each storm
with all the confidence
of those who reel in sails
nightly and for ever,
we tread the water
like mosquitoes.
- from "The Sea Around Me" 1976, 1977 |
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