On its side in a trailer at the curb, one bare Christmas tree.
Or is it a casket in a hearse, and a human tree?
The Last Day of the Year — 2018
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Archive for January 2019
Winter Notes
There’s a spider in the wind chime, and I’m in my web of winter thoughts and old gray clothes, blowing notes through hollow, crumbling walls, while the wind, so cold, sings prayers and moans her frozen colophons — once, twice, breath, ink . . . ghosts. [ 244 ]
He’s a Shakespeare of sorts, demented, plumed, and proud,
but he answers to Quixote when no one else is around.
A Shakespeare of Sorts
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A Shakespeare of Sorts
My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes
Each day, I give thanks for the unknown and unexplained. My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes My mother saved our baby shoes, two handfuls of wedding rice in delicate nets, flowers, roses, brittle stems, in her cedar chest. And in all her years of not remembering, I wonder which she forgot the best. I wonder which she smiled at when she sat here dreaming in her make-believe and present-tense. […]
I Like the Idea
For every love, every grief, every pain, an early-morning streetlight — but there is, I am certain, one star to explain. “Early-Morning Streetlight” Recently Banned Literature, December 29, 2014 I Like the Idea I like the idea that there’s an idea. In the bare trees of winter. In the wise-hungry birds. In madness and mittens. Out past the graveyard. Have you seen them? How they roost on the branches […]
Moving Books Around
At the moment there’s scarcely room here to sit, leave alone exercise free movement of my elbows. And while this is only a slight exaggeration, I’d best make no sudden moves, or I might topple the tall stacks of books everywhere around me, as the room is in a state of turmoil brought on by my decision to add two more tall bookcases, despite the fact that there’s no obvious […]
This gentle soul came into being this past Christmas Eve.
But of course he has always been with us.
And it’s not hard to believe he always will be,
Or to conceive that love, is all, we need.
Christmas Canvas — 2018
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Christmas Canvas — 2018
Symphonies and Bridges — Two Poems
Another thing I’ve noticed while writing is that when the subject at hand brings something else I’ve written to mind, that something else is far less likely to be a piece from the last two or three years. For whatever reason, my thoughts drift back to older associations, as if the paths that take me there are more familiar and well worn. This could be a sign that my memory […]
In the Mirror a Window
Do you ever feel you’re drifting through space, and that the planets are in your tow? You are. It’s true. Space is the silence between thoughts. The planets are your memories and deeds, and the little that you know. In the Mirror a Window In the mirror a window : beyond the window falling snow : in a mirror the snow : falling in the here and now : […]
Wild Flowers Imagine the Rain
I suppose it would not be far from the truth if I were also to refer to this growing collection of oddities and notes as my papers, because I am definitely proceeding with the idea that everything that ever was and will be of lasting importance to me can be found in these pages. Each department is its own neatly labeled crate of material. All that’s missing, really, is a […]
William Michaelian 