FLIGHT PLAN

Photograph by Bob Gentry 8/5/99

A Thought for Today

Deal gently with the absent.

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 & The Author's Note from "Love's Been Good to Me," by Rod McKuen.

Author's Note

LOVE'S BEEN GOOD TO ME is not a very extraordinary title for a collection of my poetry. I write about love often, in all of its aspects. If, in life, the feelings I've been willing to share have not always been greeted with the same amount of ardor I directed toward a love object I can't complain.

I've known certain minutes of pleasure worth millenniums of pain. And I assure you I was younger - perhaps a lot younger - when I stated 'there is no loving without losing'. I would amend that statement now and say that I have never loved and not learned something valuable... however difficult the circumstance, however lean the pickings, I always came away with more than I gave. Even when I was sure I'd given the lot.

If there is a so-called lot ( all there is ) to loving, I'm convinced that several lifetimes would not, could not, exhaust the lover. If certain experiences I write about seem born of pain, they surely were, but the compensation - not always evident at the time, overrides the sorrow and self-pity.

Perhaps my banner with its strange device is merely made of hope heaped high on hope in the name of self-preservation. I don't think so. I enter into each relationship with trust and I am not easily convinced that something I want badly enough or believe in will not work. Love works if you work at it.

So much for platitudes, except that I'm convinced there is little life without love. Love has in common with living, good times - bad times.

Some years ago I wrote a song called LOVE'S BEEN GOOD TO ME. It was all about traveling and loving in different climates. This book is a collection of things I've written about the different climates of love. Some of the poems date back more than twenty years and were written in twice that many countries and places. Some of the poetry included here was selected with the help of friends. Good friends. Most of it was re-selected in the middle of the night when friends are fast asleep and the written word is more a rival than a roommate. The newest poems were composed in Los Angeles and New York.

For as long as I can remember giving concerts I've stated at the end of each one 'it doesn't matter who you love or how you love but that you love' adding, 'If you came with somebody... be nice to them, if you didn't - look around'. Last night in Philadelphia after the second show, I forgot to remind the audience of that belief. And you know what, I came home alone.

R.M. January 1, 1979 New York City

Celebration

Your feet came
noisily up the stairs
your eyes and arms
came bounding through the door
I stood there looking at you
too stunned to believe it true
too happy to disbelieve.

You came home.
I thanked God
a thousand times tonight.
Each time I touched you
I thanked God.

-first published in "And Autumn Came," 1954

                                            - Chosen by JH

Don't Imagine Endings

"Love's Been Good To Me" was first published 1979 by Pocket Books