Rod McKuen - Flight Plan


SATURDAY 15th & SUNDAY 16th Click on the logo below to visit the all new Stanyan House web site as well as the new Stanyan Bar & Grille Message Board		Rod on Maui, August 2003. Photo by John Scoggins. ©2003 by Stanyan Entertainment. A Thought for Today To forget we’re God’s children is to never grow up. THE WEEKEND WATCH Short Story / for Sam Crocker The old A train did not just make the San Francisco / Oakland run, it traveled half around the Oakland Bay. A set of un-punched transfers found amid the gutter litter could be redeemed for romance rides day trips lasting half a day. A wave at someone, no one waving back from like train passing by, a smile imagined from a neighborhood, a frown deflected with an eye blink, contact made without contact - could push a little dream beyond imaginary boundaries set and taught by those without imaginations. I saw her first deftly stepping platform steps at the Lakeside stop, rummaging through her pocketbook for change or something smaller than a Lincoln bill. Hair, not hair at all, but something else, eyes without a smudge of camouflage. She came down in the aisle toward me and then passed. Six stops and she was getting up to go. I barely made it through the folding door behind her without my shirttail being caught. She transferred to the Ashcroft train. I transferred too. By now I knew she must have caught my little glance, then open stare. I still remember those white shoulders barely covered by a cotton dress and how when she shrugged out of thought they moved, rose up, rose up again and caused her breasts to gently brush the Summer sundress, her flesh as gentle to the cotton as bee to blossom. Would I were the dress, I thought, against the skin, my head the head that next would lie against the flesh released from dress. Summer wishes. Many Summers gone. Summer daydreams, life sails out upon. And I remember that the sun was spinning, sending tracer bullet beams through my bus window blinding me to everything but that round, heaving woman - sun's rod for its diving. Some rites have not mere metaphoric passage, but are themselves the engine spurred on by blow of buggy whip. Some dreams surface in a certain Summer and ride the decades out without becoming pale or less than their first glimmer. Some dreams are more than dreams and taller than short stories. She smiled across at me and asked directions or instructions or... this part is hazy, not remembered well... Would you like to come with me? She turned on that heart-stopping exit line. The door stayed open for eternity then finally folded back in line. I sat there. Stayed there. Twelve. - from "Intervals", 1986 Click on the Stanyan House logo to buy Rod McKuen books, CD's and lots more Click on the heart logo to subscribe to the Rod McKuen mailing list Catch Rod McKuen live! Click on the links below for details of concerts and appearances. ROD McKUEN CONCERTS ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES



		SATURDAY 15th NOVEMBER Edward Asner o Howard Baker o Daniel Barenboim o Joanna Barnes o Jorge Bolet o Petula Clark o Beverly D’Angelo o Felix Frankfurter o Bill “C.W. McCall” Fries o W. Averill Harriman o John Kerr o Curtis Le May o Frida Lyngstad o Whitman Mayo o Clyde McPhatter o Bill Melendez o Marianne Moore o Georgia O’Keeffe o Erwin Rommel o Judge Joseph Wapner o Sam Waterston SUNDAY 16th NOVEMBER Oksana Baiul o Lisa Bonet o Daws Butler o Gene Clark o Eddie Condon o Dwight Gooden o Clu Gulager o William Christopher Handy o Paul Hindemith o George S. Kaufman o David Leisure o Mary Margaret McBride o Fibber McGee (James Jordon) o Donna McKechnie o Burgess Meredith o Trevor Penick o Joanna Pettet o Martha Plimpton o Guy Stockwell

		The calm that comes of one’s own making is the most delicious of all treats. Weeds have every bit as much variety as flowers. Love carried to its highest point is simple anticipation. So too is fear.

INTERVAL BETWEEN		In the interval between bed sitting chair and bed your silhouette is growing fainter shifting as it moves through distance. I lapse into a momentary dream, too soft for sustenance too hard for mere impression. And still you are the landscape all of it. These quiet minutes with you before and after what should have been or could be making love are firmer than what arms encircle as the vaulted premium in the act itself. Earlier a petal fell from off a dying rose. It hit the table with such thunder I thought the neighborhood would be aroused. You didn't move. And down the street no lights came on. The darkness turns upon itself. Your breathing is the only music left, its rise and fall hypnotic. There is something delicate, mysterious in the interval from breath to breath as there is in between bed sitting chair and bed. The stars have started coming out, like Christmas finery, unhurried and unstoppable. In the tree outside the same owl croons the same song this one time more. His call is loonlike and still no tune comes back from crossblock tree. Not far off another owl and rows of lesser birds sit quietly in rapt appreciation. And now a cat has gotten up to stretch and drink and paw cymbidium overripe and sleeping in its pot. Your breathing takes a new direction. There is something, if not everything, loose and wandering about each breath you take and then give up as there is an interval between half empty bed and bed sitting chair. The flame released is never in proportion to the fire quenched. The way a photograph a moment after being taken drops the subject caught. Your shadow moves from you. Up against the wall it goes then arching out across the ceiling down it comes to settle on another wall. Stars now strafe the room with starlight enough to close the gap around your shadow coming back to you/us. Enough to fill the interval that separated bed sitting chair from bed. - from "Intervals", 1986

Birthday research by Wade Alexander o Poetry from the collection of Jay Hagan o Coordinated by Melinda Smith o Sound & Fury Dr. Eric Yeager o Webmaster Ken Blackie

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