Canvas 1,136 — Ladder Poem
Such beautiful apples! Which shall I bring home? I bend the bough. I pick the sun. [ 538 ]
Archive for October 2019
Rhythm and Rhyme
The sunflowers are still standing. Most of the seeds are gone, and most of the leaves. And yet there is still a small lateral bloom here and there, way up high, as if, in their kindly old age, the plants are still thinking of the bees. The bees themselves are few. Those I have seen seem both busy and confused — busy about the world’s end; busy about the sky, […]
Death’s Divine Music
To awaken, as Thoreau once did from a dream, to find oneself a musical instrument, with the last notes dying away. To say, I was borne this day unto death’s divine music, and then pass in a canoe over the brink of a waterfall, only to find, upon landing, that the canoe has become a cabin in the woods and the waterfall a gentle rain on the roof. And now […]
The Next Room
Frost. Yesterday at about eight in the evening, the Big Dipper was sitting almost flat on a stove in the north, and was being warmed by shadowy treetop flames. This morning at six it was leaning against the wall to the right of the stove, balancing on its handle. By its position, one could tell that the kitchen has a high ceiling, and that the next room is several light […]
Understandable
We live in a world inhabited by giant sequoias thousands of years old. This is true wealth. If I had not grown up near them, visited them, gazed upon them, put my hands on them, and taken their very breath deep into my lungs, I would not be this person; I would be someone else. Yes, we can, and should, say this of all living things, great or small. We […]
A Warm Muffin and a Fresh Ripe Orange
The weather turns cold, and here I am with my books again — the book of fallen leaves, and of the cloudless night and bright moon — the book of wordless days, and of the failing light in my work room — and glad I am, love, you will be home soon. October 9, 2019 A Warm Muffin and a Fresh Ripe Orange Imagine loving silence and solitude so […]
Canvas 444 — Jerusalem
Though he doesn’t look like him, he reminds me of someone in Jerusalem, chanting in rooster’s voice behind the tomb, ’mid incense-cloud in cage-like room, Spirit moored in tattered robe, soiled well along the road, with dandruff, food, and candle wax, a kind of holy grime and filth, or prophet’s gold, Where I met him in the gloom, when again I was as now, not quite young and almost old, […]
Canvas 1,040 — Evening
The longer I live, the more like a dream the past becomes. I look at what were once the looming figures of my childhood, and they seem shrouded in mist; the mist is kind to them; it softens them; their bright outlines are hidden; the light has changed; it is as if, relieved of their bodies, I have been given their souls. October 7, 2019. Evening. [ 531 ]
Afternoon Nap
You love this mirage, this idea of yourself looking out on the world, when, all the while, the world is within you. And you love the sanctity of what you imagine is your private space, when that same space is outside you. And if what is outside is in, and what is inside is out, where are you, and what are you? Just what becomes of the who of you? […]
Ladybug Light
We have never seen such a wealth of mushrooms. The entire neighborhood is covered with them. They have sprung up along borders, beneath hedges; they have erupted in flower pots and lawns; they crowd the sidewalks like bubbles on the rim of a glass. At the same time, as if to reveal their darker side, the older ones have already begun to rot. At a glance they look like stranded […]
William Michaelian 