THIS ONE DOES IT FOR ME!

A Thought for Today

Don't compete. You're lesser than no man and none are better. All creatures, beings, people are alike. How can you compete, win or lose a race, with someone other than yourself? Being you is hard enough, but someone other? Never.

Hi Ken,

One of my very favorite poems is one I found on Rod's web page of unpublished poetry. It is "Where Will I Rediscover You?"

It makes me think of my lost love, and I have often asked myself some of the same questions as asked in the poem.

Thanks,

Cathy H.

Thank you, Cathy, it does my heart good to see that Rod's newer work strikes just as much of a chord as some of his more established poetry. 

It was a real thrill for me to be able to type "A Safe Place to Land" as the source for this poem - does that sound stupid? I don't think so. Three years ago who would have believed we'd be able to read new McKuen work online? It's still a thrill for me though I can't wait to hold a copy of the book in my hand.

Keep those letters coming. The address for stories about your favorite McKuen song or poem is ken@mckuen.com - I'll do the rest.

                                - Ken, Johannesburg, October 11

WHERE WILL I REDISCOVER YOU?
December 11, 1989

And it is almost always that One, absent,
Gone, through circumstance 
                       or happenstance.
Where did I lose you and when? Did it
Happen even as we knew we were 
discovering each other that first time. 
Was loss a piece of swelling 
              big as the enlarging heart?

Sweet basil growing greener reaches up
and through the grass like weeds. 
Mallards form a rope across the sky
coming from the south in secret.
Cinnamon Teal bring up the rear.

An early thaw has made all canyons
                          into rivulets.
The daisies saying love me now
                          or love me not.
If I have thought about you more than
now it must have been some other me
    living in a different heartbreak house
surrounded by some other hedge of memory.

I have been to town and back, to Greece
in dreams and in reality. To far shore,
near field, streets between and always I
have sought you out; on yellow days in
yellowed pages, through rages of the mind
and heart. I do not start out on a trip to
corner or beyond without you for you 
have never left my head or would be heart.

Where will I come upon you, if I do?
Perhaps in death or life again. When?
Perhaps not ever, what then? I'll give
It another day, a week. Another month.
A lifetime more or less, then I'll give up.

       - from "A Safe Place to Land" © Copyright 1998 by Rod McKuen