To Long For..

At Last by Etta James

I want to mirror your image to its fullest perfection,

never be blind or too old to uphold your weighty wavering reflection.

I want to unfold.

No where I wish to stay crooked, bent;

for there I would be dishonest, untrue.

I want my conscience to be true before you;

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Touch of your Lips... Played by Ben Webster...

Farewell my friend

Farewell to my friend, J.W who died today of AIDS.... A brave and courageous life ...
St James Infirmary... Performed by Louis Armstrong

Sleeping at last, the trouble and tumult over,
Sleeping at last, the struggle and horror past,
Cold and white, out of sight of friend and of lover,
Sleeping at last.
Nor more a tired heart downcast or overcast,
No more pangs that wring or shifting fears that hover,
Sleeping at last in a dreamless sleep locked fast.
Fast asleep. Singing birds in their leafy cover
Cannot wake her, nor shake her the gusty blast.
Under the purple thyme and the purple clover
Sleeping at last

-Christina Rossetti

Journey's

In the Wee Small Hours...of the morning... recorded by Frank Sinatra









Clair de Lune... Claude Debussy












A Woman Alone

When she cannot be sure which of two lovers it was with whom she felt this or that moment of pleasure,
of something fiery streaking from head to heels,
the way the white flame of a cascade streaks a mountain side seen from a car across a valley,
the car changing gear, skirting a precipice, climbing . . .
When she can sit or walk for hours after a movie talking earnestly and with bursts of laughter with friends, without worrying that it's late, dinner at midnight,
her time spent without counting the change . . .
When half her bed is covered with books and no one is kept awake by the reading light and she disconnects the phone, to sleep till noon . . .
Then self-pity dries up, a joy untainted by guilt lifts her.
She has fears, but not about loneliness;
fears about how to deal with the aging of her body—
how to deal with photographs and the mirror.
She feels so much younger and more beautiful than the looks.
At her happiest—or even in the midst of some less than joyful hour, sweating patiently through a heatwave in the city or hearing the sparrows at daybreak, dully gray, toneless, the sound of fatigue—
a kind of sober euphoria makes her believe in her future as an old woman, a wanderer seamed and brown,
little luxuries of the middle of life all gone,
watching cities and rivers, people and mountains,without being watched;
not grim nor sad,an old wine drinking woman, who knows the old roads, grass-grown, and laughs to herself . . .
she knows it can't be:that's Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedone by from The Water Babies,
no one can walk the world any more, a world of fumes and decibels.
But she thinks maybe she could get to be tough and wise, some way, anyway.
Now at leasts he is past the time of mourning, now she can say without shame or deceit,
O blessed Solitude

by Denise Levertov


Henry Mancini/Johny Mercer..... Moon River