Love, if I must speak, let me be brief, for the birds are singing. And Love said, Each to his joy, his grief, his responsibility — not as tyrant, or teacher, but as melody. Shepherd’s Song Your hour, my century, said the mountain. Your stone, my grief, said the man. Your words, my longing, said the wind. Poems, Slightly Used, January 16, 2010 [ 251 ]
I love the droughts in writing, the minutes that seem like hours, the deserts and barren fields, the dust bowls, the great depressions, the jalopies abandoned by the road like these hobo wayward notes. I love raindrops that take years to fall and then land acres apart, if they land at all. I love the peace of a dry well, the coyote’s howl, free for the taking. Dream The […]
To have in mind a line and find it in a face,
the mind must trace its grace in kind and find its place in space.
Canvas 1,229 — January 5, 2019
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A few days ago, a red-tailed hawk swooped past the window and landed in the small bare maple opposite the front door. Not a very large bird, it was still too big for its chosen perch. With each move it made, it was poked and brushed by twigs. Finally it braved the maze and dropped to the ground. After investigating the muddy dahlia bed, it flew off across the driveway […]
We sit down, we go to work, the work turns out to be play. We stand up, we go out, we face the day. Tell Me, Grandfather Somewhere, long ago, a village, a woman, a broom. Here, now, this road, this hunger, this sweet-ripe orange. But . . . is there no dragon? Yes, there is, if you wish. And a bottomless well. Does the dragon fall into the […]
Speaking of past lives, it must be one of mine that brings Andy Lace to mind. As for “Heavy Metal Pews,” I stand willingly accused of variety. And I still have not cut my hair, even though there is time, or something that quaintly resembles it. Heavy Metal Pews So, John, I hear you guys just finished a new CD. Tell me, how’d it go in the studio? […]
On its side in a trailer at the curb, one bare Christmas tree.
Or is it a casket in a hearse, and a human tree?
The Last Day of the Year — 2018
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There’s a spider in the wind chime, and I’m in my web of winter thoughts and old gray clothes, blowing notes through hollow, crumbling walls, while the wind, so cold, sings prayers and moans her frozen colophons — once, twice, breath, ink . . . ghosts. [ 244 ]
He’s a Shakespeare of sorts, demented, plumed, and proud,
but he answers to Quixote when no one else is around.
A Shakespeare of Sorts
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Each day, I give thanks for the unknown and unexplained. My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes My mother saved our baby shoes, two handfuls of wedding rice in delicate nets, flowers, roses, brittle stems, in her cedar chest. And in all her years of not remembering, I wonder which she forgot the best. I wonder which she smiled at when she sat here dreaming in her make-believe and present-tense. […]
William Michaelian 
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