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30th July, 2008
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A Thought for Today
Leadership is the ability to listen.
This
One Does It For Me!
Ken,
I know Rod wrote his famous song about Jean but did he ever write a poem
about her?
Thelma
Rod wrote a number of poems about or for a Jean, Thelma, but I don't
think the Jean in the poems and the Jean in the song were one and the
same.
Three "Jean" poems appeared in "We Touch the Sky" and you'll find all of
them, plus the introduction and book dedication, below.
We
Touch the Sky
Finally for Jean - la vie, une vie`
Author’s Note
I have always thought of myself as a man of the elements, realizing that
my best ideas and, for me, the nearest thing to knowledge have sprung
from the realities of nature: the sea, the earth, the sky, rather than
from books of history, religion or philosophy. And so, my life and work
are filled with references to seashells, living close to the ground,
ballooning, biplaning and hiking heavenward.
Fifteen years ago, I completed a trilogy of poetry and prose: The Sea,
The Earth and The Sky to be read and recorded with music. The Sea
contains many private thoughts that later formed the basis of a book,
Listen to the Warm. The Earth was the genesis for such works as Fields
of Wonder and And to Each Season. Few of the things I originally wrote
for the album The Sky ever made their way into one of my books until
now.
The past five years of writing and rewriting, I’ve gathered together
into a trilogy in book form some of the same elements I used in
recording The Sea, The Earth and The Sky. Though meant as an overall
work, each volume stems from a single encounter or idea. The books and
records utilize the same canvas but are painted differently.
In this final volume are eulogies for three friends who died in 1978.
One killed himself before he reached the age of thirty, and appears near
a poem I wrote about him in 1972. Another died just as he passed his
seventieth birthday. A third died at the age of forty nine, outliving by
ten years his doctor’s expectations. For twenty years in a partnership,
we wrote words and music together. Now I continue to write verse for
him.
R.M., April, 1979, New
York City
JEAN, ONE
Noc - Noc had a party.
I remember that I came in white,
my flesh beneath
an off white parka
pale as any winter.
I must have wanted to be like
that never ending Paris snow.
And like the snow
I melted deep into the crowd.
Heady with new hang-ups
brought along across the ocean
I wanted to remain unnoticed, uninvolved.
Carefully I picked a corner
staked it out
and built a wall,
real enough to make
penetration impossible.
The Epiphany pie was passed
I sliced the smallest piece -
though I was eager for insurance
safe balm or palmistry
spelling out the year ahead.
As those things happen,
and we are not to know
just why they do,
you came through the door
sometime after nine o'clock.
No exploration,
no initial glances.
The night was moving
not by hours, but by inches.
No testing, feeling out,
we left surveillance
to professionals
becoming innocents
and amateurs
for that one evening.
Then
like children
through the streets
we stumbled and ran
eager to be home
in that hotel room bed,
discovering the truth
we knew already -
that we would fit
each others contours
doped and groggy
or alert.
Passion the penultimate.
Need the know all.
And something more,
a kindly survey
of each other
eye to eye
body to body
unafraid.
I cannot conceive
of anything we did not
or would not do together.
You were all the angels
in the Abbaye
who had waited patiently
exploring other bodies
through the years
then giving all the stored up
knowledge you had come upon
to me.
It mingled with my own
until the larder of our learning
was flowing over and overflowed.
Having come back
to a favored city
after too long a time
My need spread over you
and into you
like a mantle of want.
I held back not a nod
or wince.
I was
I am convinced
no motion or emotion
stayed fastened
to its mooring place
and no clocked-off hour
was wasted or ill spent.
The morning
and the night
and another morning came
each went away
as we grew stronger
because the pouring into
one another
came from each of us
in equal measure.
Pleasures
of the pleasure dome
not known to me
are well known now
as I look back
upon my sojourn
into your Samarkand.
So it was
we squandered
all the silence
and knelt together
in the endless night
that stretched through the days.
Your face was like
a mirror
and like Narcissus
I looked into it
with longing and with love.
Whatever else the Paris winter offered
stays a mystery. - from "We Touch The
Sky", 1978 & 1979.
JEAN, TWO
Let the revolution
die-a-borning.
No morning war
could ever fill
our pushed together
single beds.
No quarrel
worth the quarreling
has yet been able
to move us
from within these walls
to the public garrisons.
- from "We Touch The
Sky", 1978 & 1979.
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