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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99

A Thought for Today

Anger does no good to anybody, not the practitioner or the object of scorn.

 

GLENN YARBROUGH ALERT

Glenn Yarbrough will be in Watsonville, CA (by Santa Cruz)
at the Mello Center for the Performing Arts November 29th, 1999
on his "The Forgotten Carols" tour.

Glenn Singing Christmas Carols! Don't miss it! Rod

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 "Seasons in the Sun," by Rod McKuen

Looking Back

There is no single day
                    or time
within the life
I've so far lived
that I'd have changed
                 or altered.

Possibly there are some days
I could have missed
and never missed,
but I suspect that I could not
have come down to this place
                   a different way.
As I suspect that being here
I don't as yet know where I am.

                                            - Chosen by J.H.
notable birthdays Abigail Adams o Billy the Kid o Maxwell Caulfield o Manuel de Falla o Ruth Etting o Victor Jory o Boris Karloff o Steve Landesberg o Johnny Mandel o Harpo Marx o Franklin Pierce o Shel Silverstein

Planter's Moon

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 eyes
lately gathered
         in a crowd,
curious and hoping
for the accident,
I knew it would be
              different.

I've kept my distance,
trying hard to keep the rules
and never violate the boundaries.
There were 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'd keep 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.

-first published in "Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows" 1966

                                       - Chosen by M.S.

"Seasons in the Sun" was first published in 1974 by Pocket Books.
© 1984, 1988, 1999 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved
Birthday research by Wade Alexander o Poetry chosen by Jay Hagan and Melinda Smith
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