A friendly neighbor out walking is glad to see us. After exchanging greetings, he reaches out as we pass, and almost touches my shoulder. Someday we might even know each other’s names, and then forget them when we’re older. And someday when it’s warmer, we will be colder. Oaks Remember Poppies Sunflower sprouting in a paw-print. A pot on the step by the door. Oaks remember poppies. We forget […]
Canvas 1,234
They arrived almost immediately after I had awakened
from a surprisingly deep after-lunch sleep.
Or maybe they were already here,
and I am the one who arrived.
Or it might be all of us were away,
and fate arranged our simultaneous return.
March 31, 2019
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The crocuses we planted near the sidewalk and which had their first bloom last spring, doubled, tripled, possibly even quadrupled this year. Like love, the bulbs are spreading, and in so doing, they are making their own fertile ground. Wobbles a squeaky old tricycle and a squeaky old man love is the child who gives him her hand [ 337 ]
Canvas 1,233 — March 29, 2019
The cherry blossom part of me flowers and falls.
The part that is a cloud stays awhile and goes.
That which is the earth is mud upon your shoes.
And now I am your cup, waiting to be filled.
“Tea Time”
Recently Banned Literature, March 22, 2017
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Immersed as I have been in the humble, candid, beautifully written memoirs and letters of the great Civil War generals Grant and Sherman, it would be odd indeed if this old poem of mine did not come to mind. And then there is the biographical, historical masterwork by Carl Sandburg, the six-volume Abraham Lincoln, given us in two parts: the two-volume Prairie Years, and the four-volume War Years. Sandburg, born […]
High upon my crooked ladder, cloud in one hand, sun in the other. “Balancing Act” Poems, Slightly Used, May 24, 2009 My Next Life In my next life I will paint houses for a living. I will dip my brush in a quiet field beside a stream, and work from the roots of my imagining. I will paint not as houses are, but as they will someday be, families […]
There are all sorts of love letters in this world. This world is a love letter. Great Gray Granite Well, I just can’t help it. I love being so old that no one knows how young I am — except for you, of course — you’ve known all along, since long before either of us was born. I was a rock — a great gray granite slab. Do you […]
How many people I had been before this poem was written, how many I was during the sustained moment of its composition, how many immediately upon its completion, how many I have been since then, how many I am now, and how many I will be if I survive this unwieldy sentence, all while being who I am in any recognizable, cohesive sense, is, I imagine, at least partly answered […]
Love the objects in your care, and hold them dear, for who objects to love, cares more, for fear. “Dusting” Recently Banned Literature, September 20, 2014 Dusting I see objects much as I see words. They demand a harmony of arrangement, a certain space around them, and this in turn relates to the larger space in which they’re contained. A room is a page. A word is a hat, […]
What I know is not what I think I know. What I know is a secret I am told. That the secret is in a language I do not understand is not as sad as it might seem. For if the language was one I understood, there would be no need for words like these. And poems would not fall from trees. The End of Me cherry blossoms will […]
William Michaelian 