2015
Between Acts
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The Climb
The potted petunia bloomed itself silly, then we cut it back, and now it’s covered with fresh green growth and a wealth of new flowers. Purple, púrpura, velvet, terciopelo. One thing I notice about older hikers who walk with a stick, is how the stick is as much a companion as it is a physical aid. For me, metal walking poles, as useful as they apparently are, have no appeal. […]
Show and Tell
In his dream, he wandered the narrow, winding streets of an ancient city. Along the way, he saw an old blind woman selling nuts and grains, and a young boy carrying fresh warm bread to customers as yet unknown to him. Hearing his footsteps and smelling the bread, the woman bade him stop; this he did, bowing theatrically, as was his wont. Speaking in a singing sort of way, he […]
2018
Canvas 1,182
Canvas 1,182
[ 75 ]
Between Windmills
Yesterday we had the good fortune of visiting the Grove of the Patriarchs
in the shadow of Mt. Rainier. Ancient red cedars and firs.
It was ninety-five degrees. Their bark was cool to the touch.
Old people there, and infirm. Little children with wide eyes and walking sticks.
The crossing of a suspension bridge one or two at a time.
A woman with a cane, a man with a long white beard.
Both were dusty, sweating, and smiling.
The Grove of the Patriarchs. The Grove of the Matriarchs.
Words. Names. Do we really need them, with so much patience around?
Canvas 1,223 — August 9, 2018
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Canvas 1,223 — Cedars and Firs
No Tobacco
I clench the pipe between my teeth. No tobacco. I think about a trip to the store, the fine aroma of a newly opened pouch. But I don’t get up. Instead, I light an imagined match with the flick of a nail, and then I puff and inhale, puff… and… inhale. The store is a little place on the corner in an undiscovered country. There’s a bell on the door. […]
Street Scene
A beggar with a wide flat back, bent to tie what’s left of his shoes, laces foul, nails gone, smelling for all the world like human rust, and I, a lamp post anchored to this spot, painted like a song to resemble steel, desperately in need of hands. Poems, Slightly Used, October 10, 2010 [ 72 ]
Papa, 1908
This is my father’s father, from a large photo-portrait taken when he was twelve, about two years after his arrival in this country. Since to a surprising degree this picture shows the way I think, I might attempt more of these strange collages.
Penny Thoughts and Photographs, August 6, 2009
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Papa, 1908
Where Dragonflies Sleep
Somewhere between 1965 and 1968, a box of fifty Santa Fe Fairmont cigars cost eight dollars at the liquor store next to United Market. The price for a transistor radio battery was nineteen cents — three cents more than a single cigar. I was too young then to buy cigars. But I smoked them, indirectly, when my father lit one. Back then, he smoked several a day. But he quit […]
The Other Hand Clapping
While writing One Hand Clapping, I once made the funny suggestion to myself that I follow the book with another, and call it The Other Hand Clapping. Had the second book been written, it might have contained the following entry from Recently Banned Literature, which records a chance meeting just as it happened. The Other Hand Clapping We met in the library lobby outside the Friends store. “Bless you,” […]
William Michaelian 