11th & 12th December, 2006
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Photo by
Edward Habib McKuen. ©2006 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives
A Thought for Today
One man will always make a difference.
FROM the¨BOOKS
THIS ABOUT TRAINS
To the memory of Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra had a big wide heart he shared with many. He also had the biggest, most beautiful train set I ever saw. We had trains in common and more than once we played with trains together and spoke of times gone by and Johnny
Mercer. One day I'll write about all that, for now here's a new poem about trains dedicated to the 'head engineer.'
This about trains.
Clickity, clickity, in heart and head,
puffing hills and coasting down,
red-bandanaed engineers wave on,
high up in cabins
over rows of silver throttles,
mind machinery.
Every boxcar different from the one gone by;
red cabooses heading through the tunnel last.
A train is heady stuff for kids on hills--
ask Saroyan; call up Sandburg's ghost.
To those of us with hobo hearts
the Johnny Mercer in us all
is proof that freights are still
the boyhood/manhood dream.
I go about my boxcar business,
still tripping ties
between the rails that sing
and down below the ever-vocal telegraph.
The harmonies of rail and line
and my own whistling above them both
bring ground squirrels from their burrows
on the right of way.
They hind-end sit like kangaroo in miniature,
then race and tumble in their play.
This about railroads.
Each tie connecting them at foot-plus intervals
was set in place by human hands
only bursting heart and callus day-work understands.
American as blue skies over brown earth,
fertile land,
the railroad is the ribbon tied up by Chicago knot
that fed a nation growing up
when airplanes were but clumsy,
ill-tempered birds.
This about trains disappearing.
Taking with them something of reality,
another part of freedom bound away
to scrap heap or the river bottom.
Dead and mourned but little in their passing,
yet everlasting in the heart.
The shoulder no more shouldering
the bright-as-starlight gleaming rail
set down to meet another.
The mind no longer traveling ahead
to where the railroads hub and meet.
Something of quality
goes with the rail upended,
boiled and bent to bumpers
for the Model T or whatever.
Part of the country not to be recovered
moves off when cars are disconnected,
left at sidings and forgotten.
This about trains.
They are not missed,
for they are no less real
for being conjured.
But trains cannot be told
the way a favored fairy tale
can be regurgitated, different every time.
So generations happening on this
or other railroad maps
will never know them.
One more thing that even picture books
have precious little space for.
-from "A Safe Place to Land," 2000.
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Monday
11 December
Bess Armstrong o
Hector Berlioz o
Ron Carey o
Stein Eriksen o
Teri Garr o
David Gates o
Lynda Day George o
Tom Hayden o
Jermaine Jackson o
Fiorello LaGuardia o
Brenda Lee o
Jean Marias o
Thomas McGuane o
Victor McLaglen o
Donna Mills o
Rita Moreno o
Carlo Ponti o
Alexander Solzhenitsyn o
Rider Strong o
Big Mama Thornton o
Jean-Louis Trintignant o
Ken Wahl o
Matt Wheeler o
Marie Windsor
Tuesday
12 December
Virgin of Guadalupe (Mexico)
Madchen Amick o
Tracy Austin o
Bob Barker o
Mayim Bialik o
Sheila E. o
Gustave Flaubert o
Connie Francis o
Bridget Hall o
Wings Hauser o Ed
Koch o
Liesbeth List o
John Osborne o
Cathy Rigby o
Edward G. Robinson o
Frank Sinatra o
Harry Warner o
Dionne Warwick o
Grover Washington, Jr. o
Joe Williams |
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If you believe the world is your balloon, hold onto it tightly.
If you believe the world is your oyster, don't settle for anything less in life than pearls.
If the world is your horse, you better be a dammed good rider.
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Empty Is
-for Frank Sinatra |
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Empty is
the sky before the sun wakes up the morning.
The eyes of animals in cages.
The
faces of women in mourning
when
everything has been taken
from them.
Me?
Don’t ask me about empty.
Empty is a string of dirty days
held together by some rain
and the cold wind drumming
at the trees again.
Empty is the color of the fields
along about September
when the days go marching
in a line toward November
Empty is the hour before sleep
kills you every night
then pushes you to safety
away from every kind of light.
Empty is me.
Empty is me.
- from the album & Book “Frank Sinatra: A Man
Alone,” 1969 & “In Someone’s Shadow,” 1969 |
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