MONDAY
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Rod & Sunny: Photo by Bob
Gentry 8/5/1999
A Thought for Today
The sea invents, we rearrange. The sea
takes out a patent, we infringe. The sea holds all the copyrights to all
the most important works, speaking truth that even time won't change.
And still we steal from her.
FROM the¨BOOKS
The featured book today is the
1977 volume "The Sea Around Me ...".
Author’s Note - from "The Sea Around Me ..."
I have thought it true and for a long time lived by John Donne’s ministry
that “no man is an island” and yet I do believe that for a while I have
been just that - an island to myself. Separated, adrift - though not set
apart, dreaming still that tanned Tarzan will swing down from some tree
and rescue me or that a dozen sirens will come singing as they form a
bridge from this place to the mainland ( the mainland would be to be not
one, but two ).
I would not willingly be a sailor, leaving land too long a time. I could
not live the life of some far fisherman, hip high in water every morning,
dragging in the nets at night. But the ocean has always had a pull for me.
Something tugs and tugs, I’ve no doubt of that, something from the sea,
whichever one I’m near. And when I stray too far from beach land I’m
called back. What calls or carries me till I’m within the range of water
once again is a mystery. I do know that the calm times, the quiet ones -
not necessarily the best - have been lived out near the sea.
No man wants the hidden hand of anything to be his pilot. He should set
out on some journeys with only maps of his own choosing; no compass but
the one he carries in his head. Should he then sail beyond the earth’s
edge it will be his business only.
A year ago, I completed a book entitled The Morning of My Life. Shortly
before its intended publication I withdrew it. The reasons, I suppose, are
many. Most especially, on the printed page it came out more personal than
I had expected. Without its publication there is a time lapse in my life.
I have tried to cure that time lapse by chronicling my life with the sea.
I am not in love with any one ocean - it would be hard for me to decide
whether I like the light blue water off the coast of Greece, the deep
azure color found along the coast of Mexico or the blue-black water off
Fire Island best. Certainly the Atlantic and Pacific are much in evidence
in this book.
By no means is this my final book about the sea, but it is an introduction
as well as a collection of poems that I have saved over a time that I now
feel like sharing.
A year go I published The Sea Around Me and The Hills Above in Great
Britain. Much of that material is contained here, but that was part of a
trilogy and this book, now at least, is meant to stand on its own.
Rod McKuen - New York, July, 1977
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(posted 09/28/2002).
ROD McKUEN
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I
have always been a man of elements, feeling that the best ideas and the
nearest thing to knowledge have to spring from the most real of all
realities the sea, the earth, the sky rather than from history or
philosophy books.
If the sea did not make me, at the very
least it rubbed me, rolled me out of darkness into light. For I have
seen my past and future on the whitecaps dancing out beyond a thousand
shorelines.
Don't go yet, there's got to be some sea
coast we've not seen. Hold on to me and we'll go flying through the
spring.
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I AM HEADING HOMEWARD |
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Arms full of
promises
beds full of dreams
a head full of songs and none -
no one to hear them
at close quarters.
I am heading homeward
homeward bound am I
traveling from
the farthest point north
in California
to its middle and to home.
Having felt your strength
come into me
from the first long touch
to the last hand clasp
I am stronger now.
But I am weak for wanting,
tied up in knots from so much need,
wound in a ball and doubled over
from happenstance
that wouldn’t,
will not go on happening.
Stopped still am I
from your so fragile so firm hand.
You left me more a boy
and less a
man
than I might have cared to be.
Listen to me
I am finally going home
to double over and be sick
on my own ground
to weep my guts out
in my own back yard.
Leaving you was hard.
Your leaving harder.
I am going home to bear witness
to your having been with me
and some time up ahead
if I am living and still looking
I’ll restock the larder
you left empty.
I am still together
heading home
but not
sure how.
Though we’ll not meet again
I’ll still be melding into you
and sweating,
standing next to you, unsteady,
facing you afraid for always.
Down the never-ending
middle nights
out and over all the days
that may be left to me.
Your leaving gave me
my own birthmark
like the clot inside
some feeble
and unbalanced head.
I wear it up above my heart
my own red badge of courage,
my own and only birthmark
attesting to my birth
whenever.
I am heading homeward
let me go.
The heart grows tired,
timid and afraid sometimes.
It needs to rest
as much as any head
on aching shoulders.
If I can go on
dreaming up safe seas
and seaweed
my mind will still stay well,
but this old heart
grown older by its own mistakes
needs resting and a resting place. - from "The Sea Around Me ..., 1977 |
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