The first thing to remember is that the ants were here before we were. The house we live in was built on top of their house. That they find their way inside during the winter is inevitable, as they seek warmth, moisture, and food. This does not make them invaders or enemies. And so to treat them as such is an unenlightened response that mimics American history in particular, and […]
On the last day of the year, in a used bookstore we visit every so often in West Salem, I chanced upon an unread copy of a Library of America edition containing three works by Herman Melville, all having to do with the sea: Typee; Omoo; and Mardi. Priced at only eight dollars and fifty cents, the book was still in its original white slipcase, and its ribbon marker had […]
A great cry at the bottom of the hill. An owl: Are you here still? And up I go, knowing full well An answer would prove nothing at all. ~ [ 2040 ]
A wild, windy morning. Rain and fir cones pelt the house. The stove light flickers — once, twice, three times; four. Candle and matches on the counter, just in case. Then the wind stops and everything is quiet, As if a grand, cosmic decision has been made. To open palms, to sit up straight, and blow away. ~ [ 2039 ]
The rain stopped just before my run, and, for most of the time I was out, there was a hazy window in the clouds that allowed me to see the full moon. The moon is always a good running companion, and perhaps its appearance was what stirred the coyotes in the nearby wetland to howl. It sounded like there were two of them. But their cries didn’t last long. And […]
Every winter, I think about rearranging the more than three thousand books and two dozen bookshelves in this room. But other than minor changes — a stack here, a stack there — it ends up staying the way it is: familiar, visually pleasing, organized according to no specific plan other than a theme or author here and there, or a type of binding. If I’m counting correctly, I acquired forty-two […]
Not far into this morning’s run, from about two houses away, I startled a pair of coyotes, which saw me before I saw them and dashed off through a neighbor’s front yard and around the corner out of sight. Had they come my way instead, they would have been immediately upon me, and I could have told them that I wasn’t one of those setting off fireworks most of the […]
As funny as it seems, I was once a chubby cherub, a 1950s Raphael, who weighed thirty pounds at a year. There’s a picture in our sitting room that proves it, a smiling baby of nine months propped up by his own sweet girth, rolls at his wrists, and a twinkling smile. No wings — they never quite developed. There was only a minor scapular deformity, or perhaps conformity, to […]
Thus far it’s a warm winter, the coldest temperatures only flirting with frost. This is why I’m waiting to rake out the debris behind our little shed. The two times I’ve tried, several weeks ago, I was stung by a hornet, once on the left eyelid, once on my wrist just above the edge of my glove. It seems there must be a nest buried in the fir needles against […]
Early this morning, ‛neath hazy starshine, in a temperature of thirty-seven degrees, through fresh, clean air, I ran for the twenty-second consecutive day, as always with my feet bare in the flat, thin sandals I’ve long since come to rely on, live in, and love. In the vegetable section of the little organic grocery store we visit every Sunday morning, a woman perhaps in her late-seventies looked at my bare […]
William Michaelian 
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