Mending
The life of a memory, carried from childhood into old age. The lives of many, interwoven, and the fabric they make. The cloth wears at the edges; has holes; takes on stains. Here is a new one . . . and now death intervenes! [ 605 ]
After the Bath
Maybe it’s not a question of whether, where, or when the flesh and the imagination meet, but how long it’s been since you’ve joined them. After the Bath you draw with your fingertip on warm naked skin and then call the poem a rose Recently Banned Literature, December 30, 3016 [ 604 ]
Pastoral
This is my only notebook. Search the house high and low, and you’ll not find another — unless it’s my body; which, familiar as it seems, is really a record of what the stars said, a long, long time ago. How I love the short days; the long nights; the cold-dark intimacy of winter. The sun’s a pin on a gray lapel. Move as lightly as you can through this […]
Tiny Bird High
A light rain . . . tiny bird high in the branches of the western juniper . . . they are as joyfully necessary to each other as they are to me . . . and perhaps, just perhaps, as I am to them . . . including the rain. It’s easy to hug someone you love. But did you know that if you hug someone you don’t love, love […]
Even Now
The pain? It’s not so bad. As the cold rain falls, I write the words withered fig, After the one I saw yesterday, still clinging to the bough. What made me pick it? I’d tell you if I knew. Even now, hard and brown, it’s out there on the ground. Even now, as tough and wet as hell. Even now, a piece of peace the sky holds down. The size […]
Of All the Blues
I rarely think of things as being themselves alone — a year a year, a man a man, a word a word, a poem a poem — a love a love, a moan a moan. Of All the Blues Of all the blues that grace this world, I love gray the best — dream-blue, rain-blue, a lake blue by gray-night coming to dawn, eye-blue, flight-blue, name-blue graying gray alone […]
What December Said to January
December is a wise old month — somewhat bitter in disposition, perhaps, but not without good reason, as so much of death is entrusted to its care. Its pride is earned, its beauty is often harsh, its lessons are many. What December Said to January Let the record show I did not go willingly. Nor am I impressed by the ruse you call “The First,” which you use to […]
When I Stand
Closing out this quiet round of winter record-keeping, the present offering follows “So Many Angels” and “Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron.” I wonder what the old cemetery looks like now, and if it remembers me. A crazy question, I guess. Of course it does. When I Stand When I stand, I marvel at the almost-feeling where my appendix used to be. It’s as if its ancient forgotten […]
Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron
Captured in the same breath, so to speak, as “So Many Angels,” I wrote and published two things the following morning. Both strike me as worth preserving. This is the first. Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron Yesterday morning in the kitchen we were talking about our old cat, Joe, and how at peace with the world he was in his declining years, which he spent in our […]
So Many Angels
I love how an old poem like this will suddenly bubble up, seemingly from nowhere. I had forgotten about it completely when an angel-friend shared it online a few weeks ago. And it may well be that she has forgotten that by now. And forgetting recalls another art — that of letting go. So Many Angels So many angels in our lives — the doctor, the mailman, the cashier, […]
William Michaelian 