Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


FLIGHT PLAN		Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99 A Thought for Today There is no payback for those who sacrificed their lives that we might live in freedom. All we can offer is to live by the example they set. The regular daily Flight Plan will be suspended for a few weeks while I'm away helping Webmaster Ken Blackie work out the design and content of our upcoming STANYAN HOUSE web site. I hope you'll continue landing here ever day though because Jay Hagan and Melinda Smith have chosen two poems from a different one of my books for every day that I'm gone. So, something new will be here every morning. The Thought for Today and the Notable Birthdays will continue. See you soon. Love, Rod Two poems and The Author's note from "Fields of Wonder," by Rod McKuen Author's Note Done to death by deadlines, other people's clocks and needs, I took a year to think about this book before I started writing it. Though it was begun in London, continued in Mexico and finally finished in California, Fields of Wonder is not a collection, but a single thought. More and more I think that most of us have only one or two things to say. This is an amplification of what I might have said before and the beginning of what I'll say next time around. I write with love, and a heart bright red is easier to hit than some crouched black target. Even if I could, I wouldn't have it any other way. R.M. February 1971 Sunset I wish nothing now except to stay here spent even as the day. These arms, the road's end, and your tired, tired face already reaching into sleep the climax of the climax. Somewhere there are lovers by blue rivers going up steps hopeful to a hundred foreign rooms. I wish them well for I have walked along my river and found my room, without the aid of any banister I could in truth describe. - Chosen by JH



		VETERANS' DAY, Celebrated in the USA Mose Allison o LaVerne Baker o Leonardo DiCaprio o Fyodor Dostoyevsky o Narvel Felts o Calista Flockhart o Vernon Handley o Stubby Kaye o Susan Kohner o Demi Moore o Pat O'Brien o William Proxmire o Robert Ryan o Sam Spiegel o Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. o Jonathan Winters o Jesse Colin Young

Afterward		The dandelion hasn't yet been known to make a choice between the pasture and the lawn and love's as blind to rank or right as politicians are to pulse beats. Only desperation cuts through everything. Know that I'm a desperate man when in your arms-- and more so when away. I wind my watch when it needs no winding. I puzzle harder puzzles than my mind can comprehend. By these simple acts I manage for a time to ward off facing yet another confrontation with your absence. How is it that I've come to this unable once again to fill up even one more day alone? - Chosen by MS "Fields of Wonder" was first published in 1971 by Random House. Most of it was written in England while I was filming my first television series. I love writing when I'm engaged in another pursuit. So every day I reported to the BBC and at night I worked on "Fields of Wonder." The dust jacket brings back wonderful memories it was shot with Mr. Kelly, G. B. (the stand in for my own dog Mr. Kelly, who would have had to be quaranteened if he were brought to G. B.) Like Lassie, this Mr. Kelly was a female Old English Sheepdog named Jemimah. RM.

Birthday research by Wade Alexander o Poetry chosen by Jay Hagan and Melinda Smith

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