All these years later, I still find sadness, beauty, and hope in this little Bojangles of a poem. While we look back, let us go forth into the world, even if it’s where we’ve been all along. Auld Lang Syne I haven’t been this drunk in a long time, said the poet to his dog who had died years ago. But the story really begins when daylight licks his […]
Cold Days Yes, if I were an artist, I would paint you exactly like that, with snow in your hair. And the poor statue tried to answer, but could not. Songs and Letters, December 23, 2008 [ 233 ]
Fifty years ago, when my father went to visit a farm neighbor dying of cancer, he heard him howling with pain the moment he entered our little hometown hospital. I was born in that hospital. When we were in high school, a close friend of mine died in that hospital. Three of our four children were born in that hospital. In that hospital, my appendix was removed. My wife worked […]
The body at work — its processes humming, oxygen, the brain, the blood, the ebb and flow of star matter, day and night, moon shadows, waterfalls — and somehow, from somewhere deep in the tickled tissue and folds, there arises the familiar notion that I am bothered or inconvenienced, that I am in pain, that I am unfairly punished, that I am ennobled, to the point of addiction, the crutch […]
Could there be anything more arrogant and absurd than thinking I have someone, or many, in the palm of my hand, that he, she, or they, are under my influence and at my command? Could there be anything more self-crippling, isolating, and sad than the need to be someone at such a tragic expense? Would it not be better to be a tree in the wind, a survivor of sixty-two […]
If thoughts left visible trails, then perhaps more of us would see how we are bound by them. Imagine a web at once dangerous and beautiful, so dense it darkens the sky — cloud rooms, passages, caves, precipices, dungeons, veils — and that this is not only between us, but between ourselves and a deeper understanding of how we really can fly. Curious When I open the blinds, spirits […]
Christmas Dream By the time we had finished unwrapping my father, we were all very old and yet for all that he still blinked and smiled and said, “We need more wood on the fire.” Songs and Letters, December 24, 2008 [ 228 ]
If I were planning to be away from home for a long time, I would close the doors and windows, make sure the lights and stove were off, and stop delivery of the mail. I would not plant anything that needed water or attention to survive. It strikes me, though, that with this journal and writing space and place for drawings, I’m doing just the opposite. Expecting to be called […]
Walking as much as I do, I also notice the way, or style, in which I walk, how it changes and develops, and what I think it reveals about my physical condition and general outlook. These days, several things strike me as significant: first, my posture is much better than it used to be; second, there is a soft, cushioned feeling, a feeling of lightness, where my steps meet the […]
These entries, however poetic, abstract, direct, or imaginal they may be, also reflect my understanding of the science of the day. And that understanding, as extensive as it is, is really quite limited. It’s also full of comfortable assumptions, gaps, fictions, and inaccuracies. It is imaginal, abstract, direct, and poetic, like the interwoven fibers of a beloved old coat. Many years ago, my parents gave me a simple but beautiful […]
William Michaelian 