Canvas 696 — Commas and Blackbirds
When commas become blackbirds, I know summertime is here. [ 751 ]
Archive for May 2020
Laughing
Early morning. Goose Lake is nearly as full as we’ve seen it and is sprouting lilies by the thousand, some just beginning to bloom. From our vantage point, the water hugging the far shore seems higher than the ground we’re on, the surface alive with yellow stars. Everything’s in a state of fragrant intensity; every life-form, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is rapt in the sacred rite of spring. We’re exalted […]
One Thing We Can Learn From Flowers
One thing we can learn from flowers is how to meet one another with an open, welcoming face . . . Imagine young parents pushing strollers filled with flowers . . . Through gardens of children blooming in the last May showers . . . And an earth rejoicing in the human race . . . Recently Banned Literature, May 23, 2017 [ 749 ]
Canvas 902 — Irises and Dreams
Irises and Dreams The tomato plants are growing like weeds in the rain. This morning I walked in a dense, heavy mist. The robins were out. Some starlings. A towhee. Silence emanated from coy-hidden crows. Crow silence. Black-ink silence. The atmosphere, it seemed, was deep into the process of paper-making. A calligrapher’s dream. A mark here, a mark there, and thus a new language is born, and is off […]
Cloud Paintings
Lines arranged in such a way as to suggest a face but they’re not really lines and not arranged the way flesh holds us together one might almost see cloud paintings if they were there and we were here as we imagine ourselves to be where the sky and river meet oh it is such vanity to speak! [ 747 ]
Canvas 1,247 — Wings
Butterfly, why was I given this stone tablet, chisel, and hammer? “Wings” Poems, Slightly Used, March 17, 2009 [ 746 ]
Survivor
I wrote the first line and thought haiku. Then it sprouted leaves. The last line fell from the oak’s highest branch. Each of its seventeen syllables is an acorn, at the center of which is mist. Survivor I was once like that — a crushed plant on the path, my flowers smiling back. Then I was an oak, with a swing tied to my lowest branch, and a hole […]
Between Sleeps
May it be said, that between sleeps, I was as drunk as any flower. [ 744 ]
In Season
I wonder if it’s understood that each page is written with a smile. I wonder if my saying so can possibly make this clear. In Season To pine is to yearn — love blesses the ripened cones. [ 743 ]
Another Word
You look for love, when love is all there is. You can be numb to love, but you can’t exist outside it. You say, “What about hate? Hate is not love.” But love wants you well. Hate is love’s bitter pill. You don’t know, or perhaps you’ve only forgotten: Life is another word for love. It means “I will.” Recently Banned Literature, May 22, 2011 [ 742 […]
William Michaelian 