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Rod at
Dos Vidas. Photo by Thomas Kist from the 2006 Arjan Vlakveld film “Rod
McKuen: A Man Alone” for Netherlands Public Television. Photo ©2006,
2007 by Stanyan Audio Video Archives. All Rights Reserved.
A Thought for Today
Give in but don't give up.
FROM the¨BOOKS
FIFTY/FIFTY
Some tell time not by clocks
but by the frequency of hope rejected.
I was always my own clock.
Rejection never bore me witness
or stopped the seasons' passage.
I lived inside the five-and-dime
where wonder heaped on wonder
could be had for half a dollar.
The seasons changed for me
as merchandise was changed
from paddleballs to Christmas balls,
wax jack o'lanterns to lead tinsel.
Mirrors are too close to mirror change.
The young heart welcomes harvest time
as easily as spring.
Expectations are a trap
as surely as the flame,
so I stayed open for surprise
and I was never disappointed,
not a nine or twelve
or ten years later.
Without a list of what life owes you
to hold aloft as evidence or lack thereof
what comes to us while growing
is greeted with accommodation
if not appreciation.
I gave and I received.
As is the way of such things,
more doors opened than were closed.
As decades die and are reborn
few years come down
in a different way.
The joy of small things
and what is left to chance
continues as reward supreme,
though life without reward
or prize
is good enough.
I measure days now,
not at all
as empty as I sometimes feel.
I know tomorrow is a victory
by being just tomorrow.
- from "The Sound of Solitude", 1983
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