Listen To The Warm

Today it was cloudy when I left the house and then when I went to met a friend after my stint at the senior library, I took an umbrella with me because there were dark clouds in the sky and I could see lightening at the edge of town.  By the time we finished lunch, the sun was out, the sky was blue and it was just the perfect temperature.  It made me think it would be a good day to lie down and listen to the warm.  

I was a big Rob McKuen fan when I was in my late teens and early twenties.  I hadn't really thought about  him in years but the phrase that popped into my mind this sunny afternoon was a line from one of my favorite Rod McKuen poems.

Listen to the Warm
By Rod McKuen

I live alone.
It hasn't always been that way.
It's nice sometimes
             to open up the heart a little
and let some hurt come in.
It proves you're still alive.

I'm not sure what it means.
Why we cannot shake the old loves from out minds.
It must be that we build on memory
and make them more that what they were.
             And is the manufacture
just a safe device for closing up the wall?

I do remember.

The only fuzzy circumstance
is sometimes where-and how.

Why, I know.
It happens just because we need
to want and to be wanted too,
when love is here or gone
to lie down in the darknes
          and listen to the warm