FLIGHT PLAN |
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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99
A Thought for Today
Have the courage to be yourself and not somebody else's
echo.
The regular daily Flight Plan will be
suspended for a few weeks while I'm away helping Webmaster Ken Blackie work out the design
and content of our upcoming STANYAN HOUSE web site. I hope you'll continue landing here
ever day though because Jay Hagan and Melinda Smith have chosen two poems from a different
one of my books for every day that I'm gone.
So, something new will be here every morning. The Thought for Today and the Notable
Birthdays will continue. See you soon.
Love, Rod
Two poems from
"Intervals"
A note from Jay Hagan to Rod
Rod, an interesting book. Should we print
"Is There Life After Tower Records" in it's entirety... Ken wanted to do that
once. JH.
Jay, I've thought about it too, but I'm not sure 'The Net' or the world is ready for it.
RM
Short Story / for Sam Crocker
The old A train
did not just make
the San Francisco / Oakland run,
it traveled half around
the Oakland Bay.
A set of un-punched transfers
found amid the gutter litter
could be redeemed for romance rides
day trips lasting half a day.
A wave at someone,
no one waving back
from like train passing by,
a smile imagined from a neighborhood,
a frown deflected with an eye blink,
contact made without contact -
could push a little dream beyond
imaginary boundaries set and taught
by those without imaginations.
I saw her first
deftly stepping platform steps
at the Lakeside stop,
rummaging through her pocketbook
for change or something smaller
than a Lincoln bill.
Hair, not hair at all, but something else,
eyes without a smudge of camouflage.
She came down in the aisle toward me
and then passed.
Six stops and she was getting up to go.
I barely made it
through the folding door behind her
without my shirttail being caught.
She transferred to the Ashcroft train.
I transferred too.
By now I knew she must have caught
my little glance, then open stare.
I still remember those white shoulders
barely covered by a cotton dress
and how when she shrugged out of thought
they moved, rose up, rose up again
and caused her breasts to gently brush
the Summer sundress,
her flesh as gentle to the cotton
as bee to blossom.
Would I were the dress, I thought,
against the skin,
my head the head that next would lie
against the flesh released from dress.
Summer wishes. Many Summers gone.
Summer daydreams, life sails out upon.
And I remember that the sun
was spinning,
sending tracer bullet beams
through my bus window blinding me
to everything
but that round, heaving woman -
sun's rod for its diving.
Some rites have not
mere
metaphoric passage,
but are themselves the engine
spurred on by blow of buggy whip.
Some dreams surface
in a certain Summer
and ride the decades out without becoming
pale or less than their first glimmer.
Some dreams are more than dreams
and taller than
short stories.
She smiled across at me and asked
directions or instructions or...
this part is hazy, not remembered well...
Would you like to come with me?
She turned
on that heart-stopping exit line.
The door stayed open for eternity
then finally folded back in line.
I sat there. Stayed there. Twelve.
- Chosen by JH |
Interval Between |
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In the interval
between bed sitting chair
and bed
your silhouette
is growing fainter
shifting as it moves
through distance.
I lapse into a momentary dream,
too soft for sustenance
too hard
for mere impression.
And still you are
the
landscape
all of it.
These quiet minutes
with you
before and after
what should have been
or could be making love
are firmer than
what arms encircle
as the vaulted premium
in the act itself.
Earlier a petal fell
from off a dying rose.
It hit the table
with such thunder
I thought the neighborhood
would be aroused.
You didn't move.
And down the street
no lights came on.
The darkness turns upon
itself.
Your breathing
is the only music left,
its rise and fall hypnotic.
There is something delicate,
mysterious
in the interval
from breath to breath
as there is in between
bed sitting chair and bed.
The stars
have started coming out,
like Christmas finery,
unhurried and unstoppable.
In the tree outside
the same owl croons
the same song
this one time more.
His call is loonlike
and still no tune comes back
from crossblock tree.
Not far off another owl
and rows of lesser birds
sit quietly
in rapt appreciation.
And now a cat has gotten up
to stretch and drink
and
paw cymbidium
overripe and sleeping in its pot.
Your breathing takes
a new direction.
There is something,
if not everything,
loose and wandering about
each breath you take
and then give up
as there is an interval between
half empty bed
and bed sitting chair.
The flame released
is never in proportion
to the fire quenched.
The way a photograph
a moment after being taken
drops the subject caught.
Your shadow moves from you.
Up against the wall it goes
then arching out
across the ceiling
down it comes
to settle on another wall.
Stars now strafe the room
with starlight
enough to close the gap
around your shadow
coming back to you/us.
Enough to fill the interval
that separated
bed sitting chair from bed.
- Chosen by MS
"Intervals" was published by Harper & Row in 1986 |
