A few days ago, a wonderful little girl named Ella came to the door and said she was helping to raise money for her middle school band, and that I could aid her in this effort by purchasing a poinsettia for fifteen dollars. It happened that I had that much cash on hand, and so I happily gave it to her and put my name and address on her growing […]
Enough mist to say the page could be a street the day the way fingers please a face Recently Banned Literature, October 26, 2013 [ 549 ]
Yesterday at the falls, the forest atmosphere was so complex, there was no way to know just how many individual scents had gone to make up the magical one we were breathing — the myriad births, lives, and deaths, the microscopic miracles wrought by sun, shade, light, and water. In the first moment, we were transformed; and, with the ripe fall earth deep in our lungs and warm in our […]
My wife and I are picking our way through a narrow passage cluttered with stepladders, paint cans, and bits of old unfamiliar machinery; finally we squeeze through a partly blocked doorway into a dingy hotel lobby where we are unexpected and obviously not welcome; we are surprised ourselves, for we do not remember making reservations; the view through the front window is bright, colorful, and completely artificial — a series […]
Minding the details, relishing them, staying with them day after day through the years — we might call this the art of the cumulative. The ground behind the house is deep in yellow birch leaves. Here and there, they are suspended in spider webs under the eaves; some dangle from a single thread and twist and turn in the breeze. The fig tree, too, is yellowing. An hour ago, I […]
I woke up thinking of something white — bones, or maybe snow — whites of varying hues. A bone in the snow would stand out. Like a drop of soup on Sunday School clothes. There was the sense, too, of having traveled a great distance — of having been an old man on a narrow high-mountain road, with but an apple and notebook to sustain me. And the notebook was […]
When a young man rhymes, we smile and nod. When old, he is forgiven. When in between, we shake our heads, and think we understand him. Or do we just pretend? Fool that I am, I can never tell. But I wish him well. I wish him well. For that is love, and this is heaven. Honeysuckle and Lemon Paneled wall in oaken hue, piano in corner near wood […]
Leaves in the fall — and you still cling to the notion of perfection and flaw? October 17, 2019 [ 543 ]
All my words are broken. The pieces are bright-colored leaves. My limbs are bare. Love falls through me. And the wind in your hair is what meaning means. [ 542 ]
Seen successive evenings at dusk: two great blue herons, streaking home toward the Claggett Creek wetland, as distinct and as similar as two different thoughts. And where were they, I wonder, before their last flight of day — the outcome of whose life, arisen in whose brain? Both evenings were clear. But now clouds have moved in and the atmosphere has changed. Will this lead to a change of thoughts? And […]
William Michaelian 