Some of The Best
28 August 98
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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99
A Thought for Today
I am grateful for every extra hour in my life, including
this one.
"Dear Rod: I know you
have reprinted it before but one of my favorite Flight Plans is one from August of last
year where you coupled "Goodbye" with "Song Without Words." I'd like
to see it again. Best, Arthur Kent"
GOODBYE
Once you said we have nothing to laugh at together, meanwhile you laugh at me enough for
both of us. You clean me out of kindness... slowly, till there is little left. The
difference in us, I suppose, is that if I have to change for you, I'm willing, but I want
you only as you are. If I don't agree with you or question you at all, I need help. If I
do agree then I have no opinion of my own.
I said we'd never say Goodbye. Today... the word comes easy and without effort. Maybe
that's because I don't have to say it face to face to you. We're at either ends of
telephone lines again.
Correction, we're there when I call. There is no reason to believe you'll ring tonight
after not keeping last night's promises. If you did, I don't know what we'd talk about. I
only know... the conversation... however hard or easy, would end with one final Goodbye.
The word... used with relief by you... regret by me. But final !
I love you still. As much, and as love goes, even more than that first half-drunk night
you concentrated so hard on pleasing me... and did. I love you. I'm not afraid to say it.
Even after all the mean and misery that's passed between us. Apologies are not enough, I
know. How could they compensate for rides across the oceans and the continents, done in
tears and not in laughter. How could they make up for Saturday soldiers battling one the
other. Wounding words spit out machine gun like. How could they make up for two people,
desperately in need of one the other, not making up.
But I apologize. For leading you and not letting you love me in your own way. At arms
length sometimes. For rushing you. Not
stopping once to read you needs. Thinking I'd fulfilled them each time you filled mine.
For intimidation... if that's what it was. For being timid and unsure, pretending I was
strong when my strength only came from you. For making you think that every night in bed
was one more potential crisis. It never was... it never was anything but the very best.
Even when I knew you forced yourself to bring yourself to me. I never felt anything but
happiness and honor. Joy in the letting go.
No one else has yet come close to giving me that feeling.
Goodbye... I love you. And I will go on loving. I will change as you will change. I wish
you Christmas every time your eyes close. I pray that you will run with deer and soar with
eagles, touching on the ground only long enough to find that man who will love you every
bit as much as I do. And one you'll feel the same toward.
It is still early in the day for each of us despite the darkness up ahead. I know that
there will be someone to lead you through the dark and someone you can lead. That it
wasn't me is something that I can live with. I only hope that while you were adding to my
life... I haven't interrupted anything within yours.
- from Coming Close to the Earth, 1977, 1978
Tomorrow I'll be back with some questions and answers from Ask Rod. Happy start of the
week and sleep warm.
- RM 10/23/99 |
SONG WITHOUT WORDS
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I wanted to write you some words
you'd remember
words so alert they'd leap from the paper
and crawl up your shoulder and lie by your ears
and be there to comfort you down through the years.
But it was cloudy that day and I was lazy
and so I stayed in bed all day just thinking about it..
I wanted to write you and tell you that maybe
love songs for lovers are unnecessary.
We are what we feel and writing it down
seems foolish sometimes without vocal sound.
But I spent the day drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes
And looking in the mirror practicing my smile.
I wanted to write you one last long love song
That said what I feel one final time.
Not comparing your eyes and mouth to the stars
but telling you only how like yourself you are.
But by the time I thought of it, found a pen,
put the pen to ink, the ink to paper,
you were gone.
And so this song has no words.
- from Listen to the Warm, 1967 |
