27th & 28th November, 2004
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Rod in “The Best is Yet to Come” 11/6/04
Photo by Shira Greenburg ©2004 by Broadway.com. Used by Permission
A Thought for Today
Daydreams are harder to realize as each
day passes. Few of us are wise enough to hold onto our vision.
FROM the¨BOOKS
WHY LOVE
It is not just for our own good pleasure
that we come to love each other,
discovering the differences
divining the sameness that finally tell us
what we truly are: selfish in our needs
yet willing to give everything
so that we might please our God
not just each other.
For the desperate God is not the father
but the waiting arms of love.
Love, as simple as we see it
on the outside, as complicated
as it soon becomes at closer quarters.
I believe no animal or man,
nothing that depends on contact
within the universe we know
beds down with another of it's kind
in the absence of love.
Some thing not always something
has to swell the heart
to make things work.
Who among us has come away from love
with nothing but a self-reward?
What is left behind,
what sticks and stays
as we move on
is the part of us that's best.
If we ever wish to see
the best side of ourselves
the side unselfish, unafraid,
then we must learn to love.
- from "The Beautiful
Strangers", 1981
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ROD McKUEN
CONCERTS
ROD
McKUEN APPEARANCES
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Saturday 27 November
James Agee o Floyd Cramer o Alexander Dubcek o Robin Givens o Jimi Hendrix o Brooke Langton o Bruce Lee o David Merrick o Bill Nye o Eddie Rabbitt o Rick Rockwell o Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg o “Buffalo Bob” Smith o Fisher Stevens o Don Stock o Cornelius Vanderbilt o Mona Washbourne o Jaleel White
Sunday 28 November
Bruce Atkinson o William Blake o John Bunyan o Barry Gordy Jr. o Alexander Godunov o Gloria Grahame o Ed Harris o Gary Hart o Jose Iturbi o Shawn Kemp o Claude Levi-Strauss o Hope Lang o Jean-Baptiste Lully o Jacki McDonald o Judd Nelson o Randy Newman o Anton Rubinstein o Paul Shaffer o Stefan Swig o Gloria Winters |
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Because imagination sticks, gets caught, settles in as we grow older,
finally there is only one long, silent hour even if it lasts a day.
See all sides of everything before being
sure of anything.
The reader knows the rhyme. The rhymer knows
the reason.
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SATURDAY NIGHT |
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To see them
dance
is always such a marvel
whether they run down
the length of Strauss
or stand in place for Stoney End.
Their motions are as fluid
as a kind of liquid neon,
even on a floor so crowded
that each of them appears
to be the other’s
next of kin.
The dancing
like the darkness
has no starting place
and seemingly no real end.
If you come here
three nights running
you begin to feel
the night starts only
with your arrival
and stops as quickly
when you go.
I wasn’t dancing
but I wasn’t standing still.
I wasn’t hunting, but I hoped.
New Year’s Eve did not fill up
the forefront of my mind.
I didn’t need tomorrow
only now.
Maybe I stayed longer
than I’d planned
for with the music
and the lateness of the hour
before I’d finished living now
I was driving through tomorrow.
Later on the street
the last fall leaves
were flying through
the railings
to float
along
the
dark
canal.
Another evening maybe:
with the winter dead ahead
I had three dozen nights
lined up and waiting
no different than the one
I’d just come through.
I could be content
to walk back slowly
and finally slide down into
the same safe security
that only hotel beds afford.
Knowing that it waited
empty in the darkness
my footsteps quickened.
- from "Moment to Moment" 1973,1975 |
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