Yesterday morning we drove past the cherry trees in the park across from the state capitol. Given the chilly weather lately — there was even some snow on the ground in the hilly areas around town — it will be many days yet before they are at the peak of their bloom. I was out this morning at the first hint of light, walking in an icy wind. I thought […]
Impermanence and Beauty are sisters. To know one, you must know the other. And when you do, there’s no telling them apart. How I love them — their sky a mirror, their hair full of cherry blossoms. March 13, 2020 [ 694 ]
It is perhaps not that strange in these virus times, to want to hurry and read something before I die — and yet there it is — the thought arrives unbidden — and so I set it down, not knowing whether it is prescient or the result of a life-long habit of fictionalizing my existence. The book in question consists of three volumes, and contains the letters of Vincent Van […]
We have a little haiku club that meets daily at our house. The birds serve tea and the trees play host. One talkative bright-blue scrub jay, I call Boccaccio. The dark fir, Shakespeare’s Ghost. Despite their windy natures, both of late kindly defer to the cherry, who is better known in our club as Kobayashi Issa — another name for wealth. Cherry blossoms — which secrets will she keep, and […]
Which should I believe? Which should I trust? Earth’s April, or the April in my mind? The many Aprils, the Aprils of loss, the Aprils of discovery, the Aprils of love? None? Both? All? The Aprils of the foolishest of the most foolish of fools? The April of fine calendars, of which my mother has no need, and knows nothing about? March 11, 2020 [ 691 ]
The worm moon — on such a clear morning, even her robins are visible. March 10, 2020 Steps “When she rests in the apple tree — that’s when we’ll harvest the moon.” And they took great care with the ladder, not to make a sound. “Son? Do you see her face? Why are you looking down?” And that is what he remembers, this day in the […]
I see myself rattling along sleeplessly in a train at night, through unnamed towns and across the wide prairie, alone in my compartment with a large battered trunk full of canvases. I’m on my way to a one-man show in New York. When I arrive and step out on the platform, someone informs me, in an astonished whisper, “New York, sir. It’s gone. Something happened to it, and we’re trying […]
It would be foolish to suppose I know more about Emily Dickinson than anyone else who has taken the time to read her nearly eighteen hundred poems. In fact it’s likely I know much less. But I’ve loved her music, and will go on loving it. Cryptic as many of her poems seem to me, she was an artist in her subtle use of near rhyme and transformative rendering of […]
Life is the ultimate virus — it kills everyone. It’s also a symbol — of love. March 7, 2020 Symbols Flight and Bird — and then one day Light became Word, And Sky and Heart concurred. [ 687 ]
So many kinds of apples, in sugar, scent, and blush — in a dream — as you undress — I see their orchards bloom. [ 686 ]
William Michaelian 