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FLIGHT PLAN |
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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99
A Thought for Today
Success never arrives by accident or on time.
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
Today our choices are from "New
Ballads" and "The Sea Around Me." Jay & Melinda
Negative - from "The Sea Around Me."
I have carried several oceans
in my head for company
so that when I found myself
within the middle earth
I'd have water,
wide and deep enough
to wash the dirt
from every chamber
of my brain.
So assured was I
that I had water pictures
true and fixed forever,
I came back down these dunes
toward the true sea
expecting nothing more
than what I'd thought up
yesterday.
But no one knows the ocean
unless they're sinking into it.
The shore in only shore
if you walk from it
to the ocean's edge and past
to be covered by its real
and not imagined wetness.
And so I cannot trust
my surest memory of you.
What did we have,
love at first
and then some habit
an in-between, a purgatory need?
What made us come together?
Can you say for
sure?
Stay within the darkness
and from me
just a while longer
and you'll be
only one more pond
I thought to be an ocean.
Come to me
and our collective ocean
will wash over all our days
and troubles.
I don't believe that
but it's hard to let
so much loved
and un-lived life
go without a speech.
A pity all things started
cannot finish at the summit.
Our lack of understanding
one the other
leaves us by the roadside
as the giant wave goes by.
The holidays
are now beginning,
decorations everywhere.
What better time
to just let go?
I'll miss our language
and the lack of it
but I would rather
walk the empty
midnight street
than share your Christmas frown.
They say
a comet's coming
through the sky
before the Twelfth Night
passes.
We needn't stay here
waiting for a signal
or a sign.
What is finished
should be finally finished
not hung on to
like a lifeline
that has finally stretched
and snapped.
- Chosen by M.S.
And Tonight - a song lyric from "New
Ballads"
1.
Because the sky is black
as black as most good-byes
I've come to see what light
I might find in your eyes
tonight.
Because the world is empty
and because I'm empty too
I've come to be here
for a while and look at you
tonight.
Because my new life now
is lived inside your smile
I've come to talk to you
and stay a while
tonight.
I have no compass and no chart
no way of knowing where to end
or where to start
I must rely on you
if I can't depend on my own heart.
And so, I've come here once again
to talk to you
tonight.
And Tonight
everything is all right.
2.
Because tomorrow's arms
are already real
I've come to find out
how a friendly touch can feel
tonight.
Because your back
can hold off even dawn
I thought I'd use it
as the boat that I sailed on
tonight.
Here with your head
against my chest
whatever else there is
I'll forget the rest
tonight.
I know no reason and no rhyme
no need of keeping track
of tide or time,
since I discovered you.
God know what else I'll find
here close to you
tonight.
And Tonight
everything is all right.
3.
Because you smell like yesterday
I thought I'd come here
once again and stay
the night.
Because my arms have ached too long
I thought I'd rest them here
where they belong
tonight.
Because if I'm anything at all
I'm part of you
however small
tonight.
I have no compass and no chart
no way of knowing where to end
or where to start
I must rely on you
if I can't depend on my own heart.
and so I've come here once again
to love you
tonight.
And Tonight
everything is all right
and tonight
everything is alright.
- Chosen by M.S. |
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Boris Becker o
Benjamin Britten o Hoagy Carmichael o Tom Conti o Jamie Lee Curtis o Rodney Dangerfield o Charles De Gaulle o
John Nance Garner o Andre Gide o Terry Gilliam o Mariel Hemingway o Peter Hurford o Billie Jean King o Geraldine Page o Joaquin Rodrigo o Gunther Schuller |
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The End of January -
from "The Sea Around Me"
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If I knew I had the need to travel
out of my own room, my space, to anywhere, I might be able to explain what's gone or isn't
coming.
As this out-of-season summer rolls beneath me and away, I wait. The mystery of the sea's
no clearer than it was for me before. Worse, the mystery grows harder to discern.
I've had my fist inside the world and felt for sure I was its axis. I've seen the kings go
by, though I'll admit my vantagepoint was from some distance. For derring-do I've sailed
through the clouds more easily than I once floated on a pond. However jerry-built my life
has been, I've felt there was solidity of sorts. In truth there is, however little. I
built what I thought needed building - some would say security, I'd still say solidity for
some one.
There must have been a blueprint once. Now, no trace of any master plan remains. As nobody
stops or stays here still.
I do not brood. I am not malcontent. I an mot. Where once I had opinions good and bad of
what I'd done, even to myself, I have none now.
It, whatever that should be or is, is out there surely. I can't believe it never started,
never was. I still have this life, half built - unfinished, waiting to be taken by, given
to, some one. It was never made exclusively for me. There are takers, just that, but none
that I would willingly turn my life over to. Still that's the one desire I have that
overrides all others, to give, to let go of whatever I have learned, collected or amassed.
I wonder how long I can move, go through the motions, knowing what I know. How many years
or days are left ? Why go through the motions anyway ? I don't know.
I am waiting, I will do so, while I can.
- Chosen by J.H.
"New Ballads" was published in 1970 by Stanyan Books/Random House in 1971. The
album was released the same year by Warner Bros. Records.
"The Sea Around Me" was published by Elm Tree Books of London in 1976. A Revised
Version was published by Simon & Schuster in 1977. |
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