Yesterday afternoon I saw a great brown hawk, perhaps three hundred feet from the ground, standing on air, facing a cold spring wind, with its wings open wide. When he allowed it to take him, even eternity was surprised. Dark gray clouds. Rain. Clear blue sky. While I was out, I could not always see him, but I could hear his cries. A storm in the pine: two startled mourning […]
After her walk, I find a sprig of plum, drinking from a baby food jar. Poems, Slightly Used, March 30, 2009 . [ 1040 ]
now the snow is melting and love is dancing near the tiny maple of a crystal chandelier Recently Banned Literature, March 6, 2017 . [ 1039 ]
He had a perfect way of saying the desert had been crossed: Where water needs the flowers, we’re no longer lost. And there we laid him; and here grows the moss. “Where Water Needs the Flowers” Recently Banned Literature, April 11, 2014 . Copper In Your Palm Air so heavy with pollen and perfume, you wear it home. Comb it into the bathroom sink. Some settles on the lacy fern. […]
Opinion is dead, isn’t it? Isn’t it that cozy-numb part of you which has already decided, and chooses to see the world as you once thought it was, rather than as it is? Isn’t feeling entitled to your opinion like refusing to wear a hearing aid if you need one, or glasses if you need them? Isn’t it like a being a juror or judge who refuses to consider all […]
Well, for one thing, tho’ the street lights are on all night, they don’t say a word. Then, at the first hint of daylight, even on the darkest and cloudiest of mornings, they start singing and calling to one another from the trees. And so the street lights are lighter than daylight, and dawn is darker than night. But the robins — yes, the robins, still get it right. February […]
May your customs be glad ones. May they be without form. May each be forgotten once it has served. . One Last Thing One last thing before I say hello: here is a flower. It cried out at first, but on you it no longer seems alone. Hello, my love. Hello. Collected Poems Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007 . [ 1034 ]
The rain isn’t falling in huge amounts, but there’s enough of it every day to keep things glistening and drenched. There are piles of ice storm debris to attend to, but getting to them leaves deep footprints, where miniature lakes form, not in the shape of Italy’s boot, but in Oregon’s mud-and-moss-encrusted hiking shoe. And so that work waits — or, rather, the worker waits, while the debris does what […]
The apricot buds are still closed, but not as tightly. Those most advanced are showing little puffs of color — this, after the entire tree was encased in a thick coating of ice during the ice storm. The tree and I are cosmic relatives. We are different expressions of the same energy. Here is a junco, a wren. Clouds. Wind. We all are friends. Rejoice, the beating of wings, spring […]
William Michaelian 