30th & 31st December, 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
A Toast: May your hand be full for
always, if only with another hand. May your heart be empty only long
enough to give you cause to fill it up again.
Three New Year Poems
New Year’s Eve, New York City, 1983
The old year
turning into darkness
the new one struggling
to find a path, a piece
of light
catches me between
the shadows just now fading
and the other, bags packed
moving in.
Snow today. Heavy.
Not ending till late afternoon.
Seers, dependable as tarot readers,
calibrate the weather
and pronounce a lengthy winter.
But the pines still breathe
the grass still shudders
even under snow.
If the world is rolling over,
the end is coming slowly.
Some birds along the fence.
Finch, I think
or winter sparrows.
They trot about the pillage
what the squirrels left.
They know that God
is in the neighborhood.
Honeysuckle hibernates.
Beyond the wood the deer still prance
and prod the ground
newly hollowed by the beaver.
Years may dance and do a turnaround
but little changes.
Even age and time take on a sameness
with age and time.
If winter is to be a worry
it will not be so within this house.
We are too hidebound here
to bend to seasons’ signals.
Not even pine boughs in the backyard
arch under winter’s weight.
Hurry, spring. Be here soon.
I am eager, evergreen and ready
to step into the ring and go the distance.
I will take on jonquils in their time
and mine.
For now the holly berry has to be enough
and welcome.
-from "The Sound of Solitude," 1983
New Years Eve, Gstaad, 1968
The snow this morning
perches on the branches of trees
like cherry blossoms.
White confetti picked up by the wind
falling on the path below the window
dying under footfall
the way the old year dies tomorrow.
Prisoner of a hundred Sundays
that I never made.
Product of the times
I had no choice about.
I am like the old year dying in the snow
not to rise again until the year goes green.
I have not seen those faces I need yet
though I know they are here.
In the town
coming down the hills to the valley
behind the curtains in the next room,
just beyond the rain they wait.
Needing as I need.
In the village this morning
It was raining on The Burtons.
In Gstaad it rains on celebrities
and celebrants alike.
I am given to celebrations
so there is hope.
-from "Lonesome Cities," 1968
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Thursday 30 December
Suzy Bogguss o
Joseph Bologna o
Paul Bowles o
Skeeter Davis o Bo
Diddley o
Heidi Fleiss o
John Hartford o
John Hillerman o
Davey Jones o
Dmitri Kabalevsky o
Rudyard Kipling o
Sandy Koufax o
Matt Lauer o
Eliza Little o
Jack Lord o
Mike Nesmith o
Barbara Nichols o
Bert Parks o
Sheryl Lee Ralph o
Del Shannon o
Alfred E. Smith o
Patti Smith o
Noel Paul Stookey o
Russ Tamblyn o
Tracey Ullman o Jo
Van Fleet o
Meredith Viera o
Fred Ward o
Tiger Woods
Friday
31 December
New Years Eve
Rex Allen o
Elizabeth Arden o
Paula Barbier o
Barbara Carrera o
Jacques Cartier o
Rosalind Cash o
Lord Cornwallis o
Burton Cummings o
Joe Dallesandro o
John Denver o
Anthony Hopkins o
Jonah Jones o
Val Kilmer o
Ben Kingsley o
Tim Matheson o
Henri Matisse o
Joe McIntyre o
Sarah Miles o
Pola Negri o
Bebe Neuwirth o
Odetta o
Nino Rota o
George Schlatter o
Patti Smith o
Goran Sollscher o
Jule Styne o
Donna Summer |
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A
toast to everything that touched us all year long - friends newly met
and old friends here and gone but still remembered.
Today I’d like to know the face of someone,
anyone, I could blame my headache on.
Contrary to popular belief, the end is not
the beginning... at least nobody’s come back to tell us so.
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NEW YEARS DAY,
LOS ANGELES, 1971 |
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All in all
the year’s been hard
and I am lately tired.
Am I worthy, God?
Has the penance
day by day
made me deserving
or do I face another year
with no return on my investment?
How many Our Fathers
and cycles of Hail Mary’s
will bring love out of loving?
-from "The Carols of Christmas," 1971 |
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