Flight Plan

 

    4th & 5th July, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Eric Yeager ©2009 All Rights Reserved

A Thought for Today

And each of those who teaches another what is right, they make the country powerful, strong and shining bright.

-from "The Power Bright & Shining."

 

Happy Birthday America!

POSITION

I’m neither right nor left
and certainly not center.
To me to be among
the silent majority
means to be among the dead.
And for me
not two or ten or two hundred
make up a minority.
Every man is such
because every man is different.

If I met a man
who looked like me
and thought like me
and walked and spoke like me
and was in no way
different from me
only then would I consider slaying him
for he would have stolen from me
all those truths
and all those lies
I'd found out for myself.

All the living
that had brought me here
that man would have erased
by being just like me.

But kill a man unlike myself ?
        Not likely.
There might be something
I could learn from him.

There is so much I need to know,
why there are no butterflies
in the world’s backyard,
and when I find it out
I need to know
how to get them back.

Men trample beauty underfoot
like it was gravel.
These actions are confined
to no one country
but I resent it in my own
because I love my country.

Could it be
that men join clubs
as men carry them
       for security.
But from what ?

My security is my country
and everything I am in life
and everything I know
and everything I care about
revolves around it.

And I live in America
and I find its face not ugly
except sometimes.

-from “The Power Bright & Shining,“ 1985

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ROD McKUEN APPEARANCES

notable birthdays

Saturday 4 July
INDEPENDENCE DAY, USA

Louis Armstrong o Lawrence P. Ashmead o Stephen Boyd o Irving Caesar o Calvin Coolidge o Stephen Foster o Giuseppe Garibaldi o Rube Goldberg o Virginia Graham o Nathanial Hawthorne o Ann Landers o Gertrude Lawrence o Gina Lollobrigida o Louis B. Mayer o Mitch Miller o George Murphy o Jeannie Pierce o Geraldo Rivera o Tokyo Rose o Eva Marie Saint o Neil Simon o George Steinbrenner o Gloria Stuart o Abigail Van Buren o Dennis Weaver o Bill Withers

Sunday 5 July

P.T. Barnum o Jean Cocteau o Julie Nixon Eisenhower o Adm. David Farragut o Nikki Habib o Katherine Helmond o Shirley Knight o Wanda Landowska o Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. o Huey Lewis o Ilona Massey o Rose McCammon o Joe Montebello o Warren Oates o George Pompidou o Cecil Rhodes o Janos Starker o Milburn Stone

Rod's random thoughts Since when has conscience been unpatriotic?

There has been no time within our history or our history books when patriots were not essential.

Read. Write. Think. Absorb. An empty mind will always find room for the superficial.

INDEPENDENCE DAY / JULY 4

I am high on how your smell
intoxicated, growing drunker
as we lock eyes and elbows.

The hair behind your ears
       is velvetlike.
My head slips in against your neck
and finds a resting place.

I am dying with my eyes wide open,
seeing Canaan through the jungle
up above your knees.
Let me go now in a hurry
or stay forever half-awake.
Stars and sunspots mingle,
form a clearer Milky Way,
then spill out over everything.

Your breasts
are pushing skyrockets skyward.

-from "The Sound of Solitude", 1983

 
     
Happy Landings - see you tomorrow
© 1970, 1986, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by Stanyan Music Group & Rod McKuen. All Rights Reserved
Webmaster: Ken Blackie • Birthday Research by Wade Alexander • Poems from the collection of Jay Hagan •
Sound & Fury Dr. Eric Yeager • Editor at Large: Bruce Bellingham • Emeritus: Melinda Smith
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