TUESDAY
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Photograph by Edward Habib McKuen, 2/1/2002.
© Stanyan Music Group. All rights reserved.
A Thought for Today
I think the older seasons envy spring.
SPRING SONG
Long before the trees begin to
bud, before the new grass starts to roll with the curvature of the hill
and spread out evenly on the common, a certain uneasiness, a kind of
insecurity arrives one morning or maybe just at dusk. It presents itself,
moves in and settles in. Not unkind, not troublesome, this uncertainly is
more an itch - a harbinger that finally scratched enough boils into the
apple blossom.
The thrower of the seeds lets go his kernels in mid-March. The early April
rain cooperates. Later on the lilac trees are all so heavy that their
boughs bend low and nearly break. The prairie dog sits up and calls from
mound to mound... a high-pitched squeak that all his brothers answer. New
pinafores for Sunday school. New patent leather shoes for Easter.
The May pole dance. Lost balloons begin to decorate the inside branches of
trees. The song of the Wandering Angus is lived out and sung. The plainest
of us begin to feel beautiful again... and the fever deepens.
- from Rod McKuen's Book of
Days & a Month of Sundays
Happy springtime – one day
early. Since spring doesn’t really arrive on the calendar until tomorrow,
how about celebrating it with Webmaster Ken and his weekly feature This
One Does it For Me. I’ll be back again on Thursday.
- RM 03/1902
Catch Rod McKuen Live!
MAY
5, 2002 Palm Springs, California
MAY 17, 2002 B.B. King's Blues Club, NYC
MAY
19, 2002 The Birchmere
Theatre, Alexandria, Virginia
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Ursula Andress o
William Jennings Bryan o
Glenn Close o
Sergei Diaghilev o
Wyatt Earp o
Lynda Bird Johnson o
David Livingston o
Jackie “Moms” Mabley o
Patrick MacGoohan o
Patricia Morrison o
Phyllis Newman o
Philip Roth o
John J. Sirica o
Kent Smith o
Rene Taylor o
Irving Wallace o
Earl Warren o
Bruce Willis |
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Spring speaks out to each of us, kick the guts from your old dreams, she
says, and start a new and better dream. Don’t waste your time merely
thinking. Act. Do. Deliver.
Invention is the only art.
Keep spring waiting at your peril. She will
not be held back even by an extra storm that wasn’t in the Farmer’s
Almanac, the forecast in the morning paper, or the weather watcher’s
caution.
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PLANTER’S MOON |
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The moment
that the planter’s moon
started down across your back
and promised me a harvest
great and good.
I knew that I had crossed
a different kind of field,
greener than the ones
I’d trampled through before.
And if not safe
from all those hidden holes
and eyes lately
gathering in a crowd,
curious and hoping for the accident,
I knew it would be different.
I have kept my distance,
trying hard to keep the rules
and never violate the boundaries.
There are fences that I leapt
and some that I slid under,
even when I knew
I’d tear my pants.
Not equipped with hook and ladder
I scaled walls
and burst through barricades
and balustrades
as sure as any second story man,
as certain as a centipede
all systems working.
I kept my arms spread wide.
I teetered on a tightrope
stretched between
your sometimes need for me
and tied securely
by my always need for you.
Balancing,
always balancing.
One foot before the other
down the rails and roads. - from FIELDS OF WONDER, 1971 |
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