Do I know the names of the plants that spring up voluntarily around the house, each in tune with the season? Have I noticed them all? Am I aware of their culinary and medicinal uses? Do I see how they attract and benefit the wealth of other beings that live here and move among them? And do I appreciate these fellow mortals? Or do I only pull weeds, avoid mushrooms, […]
A Japanese maple has sprouted not far from our front door, a few feet west of its lacy red mother. It’s about two inches tall and has two small, perfect leaves, as red as red can be when red dreams of purple, evidence of the joy moving up and down inside its tiny thin trunk. Birth, growth, mist, dew, fog, frost, rain, wind — how alike our experiences have been! […]
The myriad components of this universe may be seen as varying expressions of one grand intelligence, an intelligence itself perhaps still evolving and ripening. No part is greater or lesser than another, or better or worse. Each is indispensable as long as it is needed, and plays its part in the great drama, whether star, waterfall, or blade of grass, elephant, bird, man, or mold. This includes the universe itself, […]
Consciousness is the perfect itch — arms too short, back against the bark of a tough old tree, smiling ’til we bleed. [ 738 ]
To my mind, John Muir is a poet of the wilderness in the most divine literary sense — his praise and gratitude for the natural world is a song as sublime, inspirational, and wise as any sung by Homer or Whitman; in his hands, a journal entry seems the work of angels, here to recall man from the nightmare of his blind, narrow self. Muir is explorer, artist, scientist, dreamer, […]
Am I putting the puzzle together, or taking it apart? A foolish question, perhaps, since I don’t even know if all of the pieces are on the table. Remember the Honeysuckle Remember the honeysuckle ’gainst the pillars on the porch? The place we were born is an open field now. Remember the window open to the night, the breaths and sighs of oleander bright, and tallow? We are their […]
Almost dawn — the first dove — as if love is a sweet eccentricity [ 735 ]
We are in the gardening time of the year. And we are the garden. And the harvest is near. April 30, 2020 Blue Jeans And In the waking part of my dream, I’m on my knees in old blue jeans, planting flowers. In the sleeping part, I crumble sweet-aromatic soil in my hand, and, like a wise old chocolatier of a man, hold it up to the nose of […]
Next time I will let you taste my honey — Then she flew on — and left me — with a hum [ 733 ]
I would gladly wear the colors of the male towhee that sings and dwells with his lovely mate in the birch-and-ivy environs of our fir-sheltered backyard. And it may well be that in another life, I already have, or will, and that this other life has a beautiful name of its own — Now. April 28, 2020 [ 732 ]
William Michaelian 