home a safe place to land
 todays flight plan archives
Flight Plan

       TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES

Due to circumstances beyond our control......! Sorry everyone, today hasn't been much fun. We've had a nightmare of a day from a technical point of view and this has prevented us from posting the normal Flight Plan.

To compensate, we've doubled up on the poems which gives me the opportunity of including one of my all time favorites - hope you enjoy it.

                                       - Ken, Johannesburg - November 20.

Pushing the Clouds Away

Clouds are not the cheeks of angels you know
they are only clouds.
                    Friendly sometimes,
but you can never be sure.
If I had longer arms
I'd push the clouds away
or make them hang above the water somewhere else,
but I'm just a man
          who needs and wants,
mostly things he'll never have.
Looking for that thing that's hardest to find -

I've been going a long time now
along the way I've learned some things.
            You have to make the good times yourself
take the little times and make them into big times
and save the times that are all right
             for the ones that aren't so good.

I've never been able
          to push the clouds away by myself.
                      Help me.

Please.

    
                             - from "The Sea", 1966                                    

notable birthdays Kaye Ballard o Sen. Joseph Biden o Judy Canova o June Christy o Allistair Cooke o Richard Dawson o Bo Derek o Richard Kegler o Robert Kennedy o Estelle Parsons o Maya Plisetskaya o Emilio Pucci o Dick Smothers o Gene Tierney o Sean Young o Judy Woodruff
Rod's random thoughts If you believe misery loves company, seek your own counsel.

Inattention to ideals is dangerous.

No walls can stop the coming of love and no clock can bring it back.Yet letters are still sent on missions armies couldn’t win, for love or country.

Grudges are boring.

LOOKING STRAIGHT AHEAD

I will not let a war or warriors
kill my thirst
or appetite for love.
Though I do not travel into battle
with roses in the barrel
of my gun
I still go forward into life
looking straight ahead.

War worries me.
Not because
the generals lie to us.
I worry
that as each day moves
beneath the cloud of autumn
we may be lying to ourselves
enough to kill what truth existed
when we started out.

I worry that
beneath our helmets
our heads are only capable
of hating,
that further down
in our anatomy
we’ve lost the open space
within each heart set aside
for love.

I will not let this war
or any others
kill my appetite for caring.
I’ll try to keep some open spaces
beneath and underneath
my breastplate
for the next tomorrow.
Another in my helmet.
There will always be
room for new ideas
to rattle, bounce and jog along.

                                - from "Beyond the Boardwalk"

© 1984, 1988, 1998 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved
Birthday research by Wade Alexander
home   flight plan   archives
stanyan