13th & 14th November, 2004
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Rod in concert, Riverton, 2001. Photo
courtesy Jay Hagan
A Thought for Today
Romance your friends and befriend your
lovers.
FROM the¨BOOKS
Three Poems from "MOMENT TO MOMENT"
I never stop revising my poems or even my books if I get the
opportunity. The 1973 edition of Moment to Moment has little in common
with the 1975 expanded version of the same book. As this Flight Plan
goes to press I can’t resist a little minor tinkering with each of the
following thirty year old poems.
There is nothing I have written decades or days ago that I can’t write
better today or tomorrow. Perhaps the results are not always an
improvement but I still enjoy the idea of giving it a whack.
In Case You Did Not Know
Some days up ahead
will come down empty
and some years fatter
than the fullest one
we have known before.
Today has been
the best day yet.
I thought
you ought to know that,
and I thought it time
that I said thank you
for whatever might have
passed between us
that in your mind
you might have felt
missed my attention.
It did not
and it does not
and it will not.
Thank you for the everydays
that you make into holidays.
I close up more often now,
not just to you but even
to myself, within myself.
I know that I should make
a better try at staying open.
I will.
Saturday Night
To see them dance
is 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 was not dancing,
not 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, 1974, 1975. Revised 11/9/2004
AND
FINALLY
While you’re reading this I’m in New Orleans for the opening of the
second leg of the exhibition of Sister Gertrude Morgan’s collected art
works. The Big Easy was her hometown so this promises to be quite an
event. This will be my last trip anywhere for a long time since from now
until (?) I’ll be kicking in on ‘the barn project.’
Sleep warm and join me again on Monday.
RM 10/9/200412:40AM PST
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Saturday 13 November
Hermione Baddeley o
Nathaniel Benchley o
Edwin Booth o
Justice Louis D. Brandeis o
Linda Christian o
William Gibson o
Whoopi Goldberg o
Richard Lucus o
Joe Mantegna o
Dack Rambo o
Bruce Samazan o
Alexander Scourby o
Jean Seberg o
Robert Sterling o
Robert Louis Stevenson o
Oskar Werner
Sunday 14 November
St. Augustine o
Travis Barker o
Stephen Bishop o
Charles, Prince of Wales o
Aaron Copland o
Rosemary De Camp o
Chris Demetral o
Johnny Desmond o
Mamie Eisenhower o
Robert Fulton o
Nina Gordon (Smashing Pumpkins) o
King Hussein of Jordan o
Barbara Hutton o
George S. Kaufmani o
Brian Keith o
Veronica Lake o
Marya Mannes o
Claude Monet o
Jawaharlal Nehru o
Jim Piersall o
Dick Powell o
Leonie Rysanek o
Harrison Salisbury o
McLean Stevenson o
D.B. Sweeney o
Martha Tilton |
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Love, the veteran of all wars, wins more battles than the sharpest
sword.
Real pleasure can be found from time to time
by lapsing into reality.
Failure is as certain as success, but
neither final.
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HAD I THE COURAGE OF ONE
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Some distance
there is
between my back
and this new morning.
Had I the courage of one
I would turn you around.
Had I the courage of five
I’d turn around inside you
pulling all the dark earth
with me.
Had I the courage of ten
we would start so much together
that there would be no time
to finish even one thing begun.
Had I the courage of one hundred
I might stand back and look at you.
That’s all.
Moving away, moving away,
gone you are while yet arriving.
Had I the courage of one
I would run beside / behind you.
Instead I run away.
So it is that we have started out
on this new day together
traveling parallel paths
in opposite directions.
- from "Moment To Moment", 1973, 1974,
1975. Revised 11/9/2004 |
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