Having fortunately lived long enough to finish reading all three volumes of Vincent’s letters, I have moved on to Dostoevsky’s Diary of a Writer, in Boris Brasol’s English translation, published in two volumes by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1949. After years of being away from Dostoevsky’s great novels and stories, coming upon him in the somewhat more casual, conversational mode of his periodical writings is much like having coffee with […]
It’s probably no more insane to imagine reason, than it is reasonable to imagine insanity. Still, I feel compelled to ask myself: What is my insanity, reason, and imagination to make of such a statement, even though I’m the one who made it? Also: Am I merely being clever, or am I serious? Am I a model student, or a class clown? Either way, or all — I am reminded […]
At ten-thirty this morning, the sun makes my arms feel like they’re about to become wings; the shade is the spirit of cool and quiet things. August 24, 2020 . Summer Advice Kiss each other in the shade after you’ve eaten a juicy ripe peach. No shade, imagine the tree. No peach, imagine the taste. No one, no one with a heart out of reach. Poems, Slightly Used, June 1, […]
Each silence has its corresponding sound, and the other way around. The bird, the bee, the softly falling gown. The words by which they’re known. The waiting train, the one insane, the cricket, and the temple bell. The gentle rhyme, the end of time, the thing that makes you smile now. . [ 845 ]
Life is a dream to one, a harsh reality to another; a field of flowers, a prison yard. And here is one of the guards, who thinks it is both, watching a butterfly as it passes over the wall. The guard is killed in an accident on the way home. Somehow, he remembers it all. There are flowers at his funeral. They are in bunches and rows, and they remind […]
The affairs of humans, certainly — but not exclusively. The stars, the birds, the flowers, the wind. Mountains. Whales. Insects. Worms. Wild grains. These things are all to be considered, and each has something to say. A mountain range publishes glaciers and snowstorms, rivers and forests; it does so simply, reliably, and without bias — it tells the complete truth, and nothing but the truth. This is the claim of […]
Early morning. From North Falls to Winter Falls via the Rim Trail, then down into the canyon, still in shadow. Soon after beginning the descent we meet a raven as big as the next two or three crows, its beak and head capable of lunacy and wisdom, prophecy and mayhem. Its flight up from the path to a mossy low maple branch is an action deliberately made and slowly taken, […]
Even in his grave, the old cat is as silent as he has always been. So soft, fall red, the geraniums. . [ 841 ]
Up at three-thirty, for no particular reason, other than, like an oft-reheated meal, the sleeper was done, and then some. But the night joys are great ones, with dawn coming on. Dawn, the grand assumption. It is a cricket-morning, the first of the late-summer, early-fall season. Crickets cast no votes. They do not need mail boxes or polling places. They have no gerrymandered districts. They have rhythm and purpose. They […]
Our grapes, nearly ripe, were mostly ruined last night by a raccoon. At least two-thirds of the crop was on the ground, along with several leaves, the berries shattered from the bunches and scattered around. We had checked on the vine late yesterday evening and all was well. Then, early this morning, I noticed several places around the house where the animal had dug, the telltale holes being unmistakable. We […]
William Michaelian 
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