From a note written April 15, 2009: The other evening, while eating leftovers, I told my son that we should get rid of his cat and have a pet tarantula instead. I said we could keep it in a terrarium, and in the terrarium we could create a desert scene with dry sand and a narrow highway running through it — in honor of Bob Dylan, Highway 61. Somewhere along […]
This bright frosty morning, the world smells like a million lonely breakfasts. “November Postcard” Recently Banned Literature, November 16, 2008 Not a Romance, 1974 When I was hanging around at the college, there was a girl with very long hair and pale white skin. We met in passing many times, but we never spoke. She was beautiful in a simple way, like clean sheets drying on a clothesline beside […]
They approached him as if his mind were a cactus, when it was really a colorful old bus on its way through the desert. “A Sad Mistake” Songs and Letters, January 7, 2008 Night I picture a man with a typewriter in his lap, sitting on an old wooden chair beside a rusted mailbox, a field of wildflowers behind him. There is paper in the typewriter. Looking down from […]
For the first time in ages, I wound my father’s wristwatch, which I keep on my work table next to his brother’s old briar pipe. The trusty Hamilton started ticking immediately. The tiny secondhand, set in a circle built into the face where the 6 should be, started making its way around. Now, several hours later, I see the watch is still running — as am I, apparently, though I […]
2017
Canvas 1,037 — September 25, 2017
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Diary To be an autumn leaf pressed between the pages of a lover’s notebook and hear her say “He must be gray by now.” Songs and Letters, September 20, 2008 [ 314 ]
I have not been myself lately, said the wind. Nor I, said the mountain. The shepherd boy, who had been listening, took up his flute. When he was an old man, he put it down again and died. And the wind rushed, and the mountain blushed, to the depths of the canyon. Nothing I said to my mother, I said to my father, “I have nothing to do.” To […]
Are we really separated by physical distance, or are the mountains and miles just our changing moods and expressions? I see you across the room — the rocky coast, the foam: you are a lighthouse looking on the blind wreckage, on the longing, the love. And it is but one step to the opposite shore, to dusty flowers and innocent graveyards. What shall we make of it? Shall we go […]
Canvas 287 — March 4, 2011
The Pond
I see faces floating
on the pond:
which, today,
will be my own?
Rain arrives
before the answer:
the pond grows
and grows.
Songs and Letters, December 28, 2006
Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007
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The weather term wintry mix makes me think of a salad without cucumbers and tomatoes, with carrots and cabbage and kale and lettuce of various curls and crinkles and hues, and perhaps an orange slice or two. On the street, though, with the wind in my face while climbing the hill, I’m not met by tangy vegetables and apple cider vinegar, but with rain and ice and snow. Clumps and […]
William Michaelian 