Impermanence and Beauty
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 ]
Dear Theo
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 […]
Did You Know?
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 […]
Day Book
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 ]
Steps
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 […]
Four Old Canvases
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 […]
What Happened to Emily?
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 […]
Symbols
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 ]
Night and Day
So many kinds of apples, in sugar, scent, and blush — in a dream — as you undress — I see their orchards bloom. [ 686 ]
Winter Trees
“The bird names have trapped me. They exist in a realm of unsolvable mysteries: the realm of nothing more than connotation. And yet I want to know what the bird behind each looks like. Why? I shouldn’t care.” Winter Trees † Feline huntress, dozing on the grass. Along the fence, a cortège of wary sparrows, each dark face a funeral card. On my lips, imagined bird names: Shwittl, Tikipap, […]
William Michaelian 
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