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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99

A Thought for Today

VOTE! It entitles you to bitch.

 

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'll gone.

So, something new will be here every morning. The Thought for Today and the Notable Birthdays will continue. See you soon.

Love, Rod

These poems are from the 1954 Edition of ". . .And Autumn Came". Tomorrow we'll delve into the 1969 revised edition of the same book. JH

Two Poems from AND AUTUMN CAME by Rod McKuen

august 29


well... she's gone now
the wind is quiet
the tree branches no longer whisper with themselves
from my window the streets all look the same
they're not pine or montgomery or mc allister
they're just streets

i cannot say the sky is blue
or pitch-black
or turning grey
it's just sky now

is it october or winter
i don't really know
it's just another day

i thought i was a man
now i'm not sure
i'm not man or human being any more
i'm merely me

this is it...
after a long rehearsal
... this is it

                            
- Chosen by MS                               

notable birthdays                       ELECTION DAY in the USA
Marie Antoinette
o Daniel Boone o Paul Ford o Warren G. Harding o Burt Lancaster o k.d. lang o James Polk o Stefanie Powers o Ann Rutherford o David Schwimmer o Giuseppe Sinopoli o Luchino Visconi o Ray Walston o Tracie Young

september 24

why was i alone last night
i know so many people
and yet among them
not a lover
or a special friend
why was i alone

what leprechaun or genie has put a spell on me
who has said don't touch
why am i bewitched
why was i alone last night

soft from among the shadows love will come
quiet from within a dream will come peace
slowly from the night contentment

but... when

                                              - Chosen by JH

"And Autumn Came" was my first book. It was published in 1954 while I was in Army basic training at Fort Ord, California.                            
© 1954, 1969, 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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