FLIGHT PLAN |
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Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99
A Thought for Today
Good health is the best cosmetic.
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
Three poems and The Author's Note from
"Hand in Hand," by Rod McKuen.
Author's Note
The sound of one hand clapping, while
admittedly a sometimes joyful noise, is so lonesome as to leave no echo in its wake. And
while we come into the world alone and go away the same, life is somehow made
easier with the joining of hands. Body contact says it all: in a handshake; an arm about
the shoulder; a tentative, reaching, nighttime touch across a room or the wide space of a
mattress; even hand-to-hand combat done on foreign or friendly
soil.
This is a book about reaching, extending not only a hand or arm toward another, but toward
the unknown, the faces only conjured, invisible things, the stars, sometimes even God.
Most of what is here goes beyond the reaching stage toward stability; hence, the title
Hand in Hand.
I do not consider this collection 'poetry' in a formal sense. No apology, more a whispered
boast. While part of me thought I was writing poems, another part knew I was setting down
communiques. No messages are sent but those we send to one another. These words, and
strung- together words, still stay private. They are between us.
RM, California, 1977
Dedication & Adendum
From me to you.
The simplicity of that sentence is what
poetry, even communication, should be about.
The poetry contained in this volume has been selected from material written over the past
twenty-two years. Dedications of individual chapters seldom have anything to do with the
poems contained therein ( some will observe that many of these same poems were written for
and dedicated to others throughout the years ).
Names, therefore, are further hand signals to friends - semaphores to let them know that
for some particular reason, most often my own neglect, I'm thinking of them.
RM
Creed
It doesn't matter
who you love
or how you love
but that you love.
For in the end
the act of loving any man
is the act of loving God.
The good in men
is all the God there is
and loving is a contribution
to that good
and to that only God.
Boundaries
I love you enough
to let you run
but far too much
to let you fly.
I'll let you walk
to the block's end
by yourself,
sail off on any lake
or silent sea,
but if I peer at you
as you go wandering
through noisy rooms
know that I keep watch
for both of us.
I love you enough
to let you run
but far too much
to let you fly.
- Chosen by
JH |
