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Polaroid photo by Edward McKuen, August
2002 ©2002 by Stanyan Music Group. All rights reserved.
A Thought for Today
Without believing in a higher source, how
can we have higher aims?
FROM the¨BOOKS
Today’s poetry is taken from Listen to the Warm and The Sound of Solitude.
THE NORTHERN LIGHTS
The cats curl up between us
as we read aloud –
first Eliot, then Pound's Eliot
twenty stanzas at a time,
your turn, then mine.
I raise my eyes to look at you
and stumble in mid-metaphor.
We would move together
but the cats are sleeping
and so we leave the sitting room
to turn the porch light off.
Pausing near the window
to lean against each other
we reach the kitchen
make love on tabletop
and hardwood floor.
Your ears now smell the lemon
on my cheek.
We roll and bump against the wall.
I carry you to bed.
I marry you in nightclothes.
I am the pastor officiating
at the wedding,
your father giving you away,
the happy bridegroom upending
and confusing you,
the stable groom who saw you first
and rides you through the tangled wood.
I smother what you knew before.
No memory will take you from me.
You are my first grade teacher
rewarding me with smiles for lessons learned,
awarding me demerits when I fail the course,
and in a night with too few hours
the final face I see before eternity.
MIND SHIFTS
If I could wrap the rain
around me
I would not
Nor would I willingly go beyond
the reach of the clouds.
There is comfort in the drizzle
of an afternoon
and something sure and constant
in the roar of gutter rivers
when I awaken at night
Why is it
thunder's first announcement
of impending black
can calm me easier than daylight?
It may be that the rain outside
drop by drop and drip by drip
builds up a wall of safety.
I lie about security.
I want the safety of familiar arms
while holding freedom to the light
as blueprints and the prize.
There is no freedom without familiars,
no safety without the speed
to drive away from safety.
Moderation is but one more
yo-yo snare.
I should have been a seaman
or a miner,
learning flag code signals-
lamp wick warnings,
ready for each mind shift
and each mineshaft down a life.
Instead I am a yeoman
and of no convincing guard.
- from "The Sound of Solitude", 1983
Join me tomorrow when I kick off the weekend as usual with Pass it Along.
Sleep warm.
RM 10/2/2000 2:20 PM PST
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