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 […]
May it be said, that between sleeps, I was as drunk as any flower. [ 744 ]
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 ]
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 […]
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 […]
William Michaelian 