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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
The more profound the thought, the easier its transmission.
FROM the¨BOOKS
WHISTLE STOPS
I go out slowly first,
tentative,
like a bather testing water,
I scrutinize the night.
Will the dangers this time
outnumber the rewards?
Where I have been
impatient in past lives
I am content just now
to venture slowly, if at all,
into the darkness.
I know that love
is ladled out,
unloaded
in the market place
like bananas
and transistor radios
and those things
made to last
were built pre-1940.
And still I look
not necessarily to find
but more concerned
that if I lower
my binoculars
I'll lose my place.
How fortunate
the whistle stops
and factory towns
elect to keep my secrets
as they hold their own,
though a secret
is little more
than information
too dull to be passed
from ear to ear
as gossip --
too boring to be news.
Increasingly
if it were up to me
I'd hide nothing
except my face
in private pillows.
For I have almost no one
to protect.
And yet I'm glad
that cities still
continue as our guard
and guardian.
I've stayed within
my rabbit hole
too late, too long.
Perhaps I now enjoy
the solitude
I always fought
so hard against.
What have I learned
as I've gone traveling?
That I'd lie motionless
forever maybe
or die easily
within some known
or unknown arms
that wrap me up
and leave me
for the morning's mischief.
One more man, I am,
trying every way I know
to make it through
even one more day. -
from "Coming Close To The Earth", 1977
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