Bright Red Robin
The star forgets my name — the crocus just the same — But one thing they remember — or so it sometimes seems — To shine and bloom again — to bloom and shine — As if I were here — almost — and only meant to sing — [ 648 ]
Light Fantastic
“It’s foolish to walk in the rain,” they say, and I come in dripping just to tell them, “It’s foolish to wait for spring.” [ 647 ]
Letters, Journals, and Poems
This afternoon I finished reading the third volume of Thoreau’s journal — the third of fourteen, as published in 1906 by Houghton Mifflin and Company. And I am set to begin The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, after reading the introduction for the fourth or fifth time early this morning. As with Whitman, I continue my habit of reading aloud — except in the case of The Letters of Henry […]
A Passing Disturbance
February 15, 2010
#2 Pencil on 4 x 6 Index Card
Background
Size 58 Luxus hat purchased for 8 rubles
in Echmiadzin, Armenia, 1982
*
Primitive: Selected Drawings in Pixel, Pencil & Pen, 2010
[ 645 ]
A Passing Disturbance
Be Mine
Beautiful old-fashioned valentines. There’s a box of them here in my mother’s desk that she kept from her grammar school days. Delicate, simple, intricate, ornate, all with familiar names. Off to the library, now, to high school, to marriage, to war. Home again, home again. To clothesline. To family. To a walk through the park. And what have we here? Someone’s initials, in the heart of the sycamore? “Old-Fashioned Valentines” […]
Long Island Line
In the form of his complete poetry and prose, Walt Whitman has been a daily companion of mine for the last three months. Today I opened and closed the uncommon-common book of his life for the last time — but not, if I am granted the necessary health and a similar span of years, for ever or for all time. Clearly, there is much about our time that would not […]
All Together Now
Do I know you as well as I know those I know in the flesh? Yes. Because in both ways of knowing, it’s really my imagination that creates you. Is this a way of saying I don’t know you at all, or that I know you ever so little? Yes. And that, too, is beautiful. Do you know me? Is that something I can ever know? I don’t know. Do […]
Reconciled
There are three sides to a coin — heads, tails, and its round enduring edge. There is its smell, there is its taste, there is its weight, there is its heft. There is its tactile depth — its diametric likeness to a map. There is its real, temporary, imagined worth — the things it represents. There is my hand. There is my pocket. There is my life. There is my […]
All Face
Yesterday afternoon, while I was out in a windstorm, picking up debris from a windstorm the day before that, I was so impressed by the spread of deep, thick moss everywhere that I vowed to spend a lot more time outdoors with my shoes off — after the weather warms just a bit. This morning, though, I wonder if I should wait at all. The uncovered part of my face […]
Performance and Pose
Do I give enough? There’s equal peril in yes and no. If I remove I from the equation, where does the question go? Is there still an I to know? With the I removed, the giver flows — the giver is a river. The receiver cools his toes. Performance and Pose Performance and pose . . . giving way, finally, to a performance that there is no pose, and […]
William Michaelian 
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