18th & 19th August, 2005
San Sebastian Strings
albums now available on CD!
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Photo by Edward McKuen 12 June, 2005.
© 2005 by Stanyan Music Group. All Rights Reserved.
A Thought for Today
Friendship tames the hardest heart.
BULLETIN!
TWO CONCERTS
in
HOLLAND
DECEMBER 10 & 11, 2005
Looks like I’ll be spending the second week of December in Holland where
I’ll be appearing Saturday night the 10th and Sunday afternoon the 11th
In Concert. The venue will be De Jaabeurs in the city of Utrecht.
The shows will be taped for Dutch Television and will go out at
Christmas as a TV Special. There will be two other artists on the bill,
The New London Chorale featuring Tom Parker and The 12 Irish Tenors.
This will be my first appearance in The Netherlands in several decades
and I’m looking forward to seeing all of my Dutch friends and those of
you around the world that might want to make plans to attend my only
European concerts of 2005. If you have never visited this glorious
country here’s an excuse and those of you who have been there need no
reason other than the pure pleasure of the people and places of Holland
to plan another trip.
More on ticket availability, as I know more. And yes, among the songs
I’ll be performing are my European Chart toppers
Soldiers Who Want to be Hero’s, Amour and Without a Worry in the World.
See you in December.
The feedback I got from reprinting two poems from The Arms full of
August section of Rusting in the Rain was so positive I thought I might
add another two selections from the same source today. The first one
started out in Folio and the second, The Moon as a Mirage, was written
the last week of August ’03 in Palm Springs.
FROM the¨BOOKS
Two More Poems from Rusting in the Rain
Some Things
I never saved your letters,
though I wish I had. Instead
I kept and go on keeping jars
of rocks from beaches now
forgotten and the letter jacket
from a would be athlete friend
who if he had lived would wonder
at and be amazed to think that
someone bothered putting by
a coat he had run inside of
before the runner stumbled.
We do not know what love is
as it passes, as it goes. And that
is why no few of us are always out
collecting other peoples cast off trash.
Who knows what may wind up redeemable
as memory, some stones not flat enough
to skip on water, a jacket with a stain of
blood on the letter H. The heart that was
not once inside the sleeve that wore it
may only wonder and be sad.
Life and love so far removed and yet
so intertwined that one without the other
does not click or work. Can love redeem?
It can. Can love condemn? It can. Can love,
never mind. Whatever the question, it can.
Life, what of it. It is too little until
you realize it is too late.
Of course our minds can and should be
put to better function than mere memory
yet in the end what is collected in our
memory banks are all we are. The past
has made of us what those in the
present see. The future, not just
unsure but unsafe and frightening.
The night outside is ever working but
not always to good purpose. And that
is why you see some of us after nine
o’clock exhorting darkness to bee kind.
Be gentle to all people after closing
hours. It costs you nothing but a nod.
Losing our possessions does not
mean we lose ourselves, but a seashell
in the pocket can be as valuable
as a seashore memory. One triggers
the other.
We continue to acquire, accumulate hearts
and habits and stuff of lesser consequence,
rubber bands and pushpins, a penny
in a shoe. Gear that would mean
nothing to some someone else but
matter we as individuals are reluctant
to let go of. Even those odd objects
forgotten in a drawer or saved
in boxes not sorted through
for years define us, are us.
-from Rusting in the Rain, 2003
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