Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

It was Judy's song until Eva gave it a whole new interpretation - poignant and beautiful beyond words.

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Sunday Drive: Fields of Gold

Eva Cassidy's timeless performance:

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Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

Edited screenshot from depositphotos.com

Eva's exquisite rendition of this classic has been on my mind lately. I never tire of hearing it.

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Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

 -- where bluebirds fly,

dreams come true, and

what was lost is found.

Comet.

Planet.

The pictures show us as we were nearly twenty years after we were young lovers.  By that time, we both had been through great suffering of mind or body, and we both had loved and buried other husbands.

Our love was joyful; our parting was painful in the extreme.  But he had to be true to his nature, and I to mine.  He loved to be on the road, I loved to be at home; it just couldn't work.  So we lived the lives we needed to live, and took the consequences.  We both were right, we both were wrong.  Passionate love is a sweet and bitter cup.

But perhaps it simply had to be that way, to teach us both the lessons we needed to learn.  (And the lesson is repeated until it is learned.)

Yet somehow, by different long and winding orbits, we have come face to face again, across the worlds.  Loved.  Understood.  Forgiven.  At peace with each other, and more besides.  A knowing:  don't ask me to explain.

I've learned a great deal in just the last two weeks, which I couldn't begin to describe here on the Blue Truck - about myself, about Karl, about love and life and other people too.  Believe me when I tell you, it's been a completely unexpected, unsought epiphany - a strange and wonderful gift.  

In the only grammar and vocabulary I know, grace has happened, and made a change in me:  I once was blind, but now I see.  Probably nothing you would notice on the outside, but within, an ineffable healing that words can hardly express.  Some kind of enlightenment.  And quiet happiness.

So I'm just going to sit with it now and ponder these things, rejoicing.  Alleluia.  

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Epiphany 2023: Planet and Comet

Planet and Comet

   for Karl, 1966-2020

I was at the noon of life, you were in midmorning

That June in February when we kissed and fell

In love, too soon for sense, too strong for caution.

But oh, how lovely did the moon smile down on us!

We seemed to dance among the stars, they seemed to reel 

About our heads, and in your eyes I saw reflected

All my own forever dreams; felt your heartbeat thrum

In tune with mine, a summer song – too soon to end.

I watched for your return a long and lonely while.

In time, forsaken passion mellows into quietude

As green leaves turn to gold and rust

And flames die down to embers,

Souvenirs of light and heat and joy

When graybeards huddle by the hearth,

Remembering summer's caressing kiss,

The south wind’s warm embrace.

Comparisons are odious, of course.

We each must walk an unmarked path

Through barren wastes or fields of gold

To gather thorns and roses where we may

And water them with memories.

Who knows but that our found and lost

Are lessons learned to pave the way

For other joys to come: salt water into wine.

The stars swing on, thirty years have gone:

Time out of mind.  I can hardly comprehend, 

Cannot count that high.  It seems absurd,

So many steady rounds about the sun.

Never thought that I would end up here

At this cold, far place, an old man now,

So long removed from dancing days,

Leaning on a cane, shuffling through snow.

And still the music of the spheres plays faintly on

I hear it now and then behind the winter wind . . .

But suddenly you’re here, O my beloved wanderer—

Why this epiphany so late?  Why did we have to wait?

Never mind.  Oh, what a strange, unlooked-for joy!

For one sweet moment to dance the dance again,

To feel again – and know – your summer warmth,

The gravity of your embrace:  a love that knows no end.

Copyright 2023 by Russ Manley.  All rights reserved.

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With special thanks to my truckbuddy Frank, who unwittingly gave me the springboard for this poem.

Published on the day of the Full Wolf Moon.

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Sunday Drive: Eva Cassidy, Over the Rainbow

A belated offering for Stonewall 50.  Nobody can touch Judy Garland's immortal rendering of this song; but Eva takes a completely different approach and creates a spiritual anthem of hope and longing, love and loss, that reaches into the deep waters of the soul.

Sunday Drive: Autumn Leaves

It is astonishing to think that Eva Cassidy's exquisite voice was barely recognized while she was alive. Though she lived and died a relative unknown, I believe her talent must be accounted one of the greats of the twentieth century. Her genius is this: to take an old, familiar song and make it sound not merely fresh, but utterly new, to which one listens avidly as if hearing it for the very first time.

Incomparable.

Sunday Drive: The Water Is Wide

To mark the bittersweet denouement of summer, here's an old lament exquisitely rendered by the late Eva Cassidy:

Sunday Drive: My Love Is like a Red, Red Rose

An exquisite rendering by the late Eva Cassidy of the song by Robert Burns:

Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

For this Pride weekend, the 45th since Stonewall - for all who hope the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Eva Cassidy, Silent Night

A poignant rendition from an angelic voice stilled much too soon.

From small-town Texas, your Head Trucker says Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Sunday Drive: Autumn Leaves

By the late, great Eva Cassidy.

Sunday Drive: Danny Boy

This song was a favorite of my late husband's, who played it a number of times in church as an occasional piece. Here it's performed with exquisite styling by Eva Cassidy, another talented soul gone too soon from our midst.




And btw, here's an ABC documentary about her posthumous fame that I just ran across, apparently filmed in 2002:

Sunday Drive: Autumn Leaves

Use the full screen on this one, guys.

Sunday Drive: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

In memory of those who have died.