THE SEA AROUND ME Click
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Photo by Dan Chapman ©2001
Stanyan Entertainment Group
A Thought for Today
Quips, like cameras, are seldom at the
ready.
The Sea
Around Me: Authors Note
I have thought it true and for
a long time lived by John Donne's ministry that "no man is an island" and
yet I do believe that for a while I have been just that - an island to
myself. Separated, adrift - though not set apart, dreaming still that a
tanned Tarzan will swing down from some tree and rescue me or that a dozen
sirens will come singing as they form a bridge from this place to the
mainland (the mainland would be to be not one, but two).
I would not willingly be a sailor, leaving land for too long a time. I
could not live the life of some far fisherman, hip high in water every
morning, dragging in the nets at night. But the ocean has always had a
pull for me.
Something tugs and tugs, I’ve no doubt of that, something from the sea,
whichever one I'm near. And when I stray too far from beachland I'm called
back. What calls or carries me till I am within the range of water once
again is a mystery. I do know that the calm times, the quiet ones - not
necessarily the best - have been lived out near the sea.
No man wants the hidden hand of anything to be his pilot. He should set
out on some journeys with only maps of his own choosing; no compass but
the one he carries in his head. Should he then sail beyond the earth's
edge it will be his business only.
A year ago, I completed a book entitled The Morning of My Life. Shortly
before its intended publication I withdrew it. The reasons, I suppose, are
many. Most especially, on the printed page it came out more personal than
I had expected. Without its publication there is a time lapse in my life.
I have tried to cure that time lapse by chronicling my life with the sea.
I am not in love with any one ocean - it would be hard for me to decide
whether I like the light blue water off the coast of Greece, the deep
azure color found along the coast of Mexico or the blue-black water off
Fire Island best. Certainly the Atlantic and Pacific are much in evidence
in this book.
By no means is this my final book about the sea, but it is an introduction
as well as a collection of poems that I have saved over a time I now feel
like sharing.
A year ago I published The Sea Around Me and The Hills Above in Great
Britain. Much of that material is contained here, but that was part of a
trilogy and this book, for now at least, is meant to stand on its own.
RM New York, July, 1977
 Two new
appearance dates just announced! Booking for "An Evening with
Rod McKuen" at the Riverton Rendezvous is open! Click below for
more details:
Concert & Appearance Details
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Chad Allen o
Martha Argerich o
Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd) o
George Deukmejian, Jr. o
Lisa Dosa o
Margaret Drabble o
Ken Follett o
Kenny G o
Spalding Gray o
David Hare o
Bill Hayes o
Lisa Hempy o
John Maynard Keynes o
Robert Lansing o
Frederico Garcia Lorca o
Brian McKnight o
Bill Moyers o
Tony Richardson o
Igor Stravinsky o
Pancho Villa o
Mark Wahlberg |
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Each of us is special because of our differences, not despite them.
I do no expect loyalty from my friends, I
assume it.
Suffering has so many avenues we never trod
the same one twice.
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THE SEA AROUND ME |
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I
Buck had dreams
of giving Jimmy Dean
his rightful place
in the book of days.
He felt I should help him
if I could.
I wanted only warmness
and a chance to be
nobody else but me,
to live my life and my life only.
I think Buck finally understood.
One day he left the safety
of the beach
and traveled home
to write his
book.
Long letters used to come
from Iowa and Indiana
after Buck had left.
Come here he’d say,
there are corn-fed boys
who bicycle
by the back porch
nearly every day,
interfering with my work
but adding to it.
Come here, come here
and help me make
some
apple-jack.
I still wanted warmness
not beneath the Indiana sun
but underneath the covers
anywhere.
I never went to Buck.
I answered
nearly every letter
with but a paragraph,
till the letters
stopped arriving.
II
Lenny seized the winter
between his friendly teeth
and bit a chunk or two off
just for me.
I was left to wonder
more than ten years later
if I stopped to thank him
for the use
of his own heartbeat
next to mine.
Lenny left for somewhere.
I'd get second-hand reports
He’s working in a restaurant
and now he’s into water sports.
No letter came from Lenny
in a dozen years.
I often thought of him
when I was wrapped
in woolly warmness
but more when I was not.
III
Aggie filled the beach bar
Sunday after Sunday
singing Grandma Plays the Numbers
her voice somewhere between a purr
and the steamboat's shout.
Aggie moved the men
who moved within the bar
then she moved herself
back into town.
I saw a postcard once
she sent to someone else
not me.
Honey, La.’s freaked
and frigid
Your mother should have
gone to Bakersfield or Fresno.
Not Aggie, no.
In Bakersfield the jukebox
kicks back shit
Grandma Plays the Numbers
Wouldn’t go.
I had Aggie’s number
but not her line to call.
If I did I might have said
it's warm out here again
it is, it is
you should see me
I'm as brown as you.
Warmer than I was
but not
enough.
IV
Travelers on a summer beach
in nineteen fifty-seven.
How could Santa Monica
have been so close to heaven?
One by one the houses
on the beachfront disappeared
the bay became a parking lot
Lenny's old apartment razed,
Buck's big house and loft
a new communal dwelling place.
I wish I had
the number and address
of all those friends
I knew and cared about
some twenty years ago
in Santa Monica.
I’d like to write each one
and say
I am warm, I am
for ever, always.
Someone has warmed me up
who means it
and I won't be cold again.
I might be lying
but I'd like to say it
anyway.
I have no clues
and no addresses,
no leads on where
my old friends
stop to play
and so I write to them
in books and journals
hoping they are reading
all the things
that I leave out.
Not just
between the lines
but more ahead
and further back
than that.
This book begins
as love leaves off
then goes with me
as I go on
from sea to sea
and back – alone.
Later
finally in the hills
love opens one more door.
As always
I expect this new experience
to be the lasting,
final one.
As always
I come away
not beaten
or beat down
but less alive
and more confused.
-from “The Sea Around Me” 1976, 1977 |
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