50+ Lifestyles

Max’s Musings

By Max Molleston

Fifty years ago the poet and writer Rod McKuen was well known, popular, and full of accomplishments for his swing at poetry and song lyrics. His relaxed deliveries were right on with readers who could not put up with overcomplicated words and phrases to tell love stories of any kind. What you read now is an encore from several Christmas writings past. It is from one of fifteen of his publications, titled
The Carols of Christmas. The poem:

Gift without strings

I’ll walk you
just as far
as Christmas Day
and not one hour further,
leaving you to make your way
through the winter and the springs ahead.

A gift I give you
with no ribbon or bright bow
attached to me

or to a Christmas contract.
A present of reality
is made from truth
as much as it is shaped from love.

Go forward, straight ahead.
There are no limits on your life
but those barricades
you’ll build yourself.

Thought I give you only words
to unravel in this Christmas Day
and words may not seem
such a pretty present,
if you let them work for you
one day you’ll thank me
with a shining smile
brighter than the one I’m sending
out and over to your young face now.

A caring, gentle and noble statement, surely one you would have rendered to a young person you know and love if you had the chance on a Christmas day, or any other day.

We embark upon the year 2020 and who knows what to think? Here, we will have a poem or two and know that it is where we are, in January.