There are mornings when the mind has no particular need or desire for clarity. Or it might not be the mind at all; it might be the world that has no need or desire to show herself — as if she’s just out of the bath, her skin fragrant and naked and warm, and in no hurry to put on the day. How foolish the mind would be to say, […]
Our grandsons were here, together and warm in their grandmother’s chair, talking about football. I went out for a walk after supper. It was cold, but not too: twenty-nine degrees; still, but not blue: the breath of a breeze. The stars were out. The Big Dipper was standing on its end: pirouette. No one was out: no cat, nor dog, no cleared throat. Bare trees: ghosts: roses: smoke: fir is […]
When we take more than we need, we take it from each other. And when we take it from each other, we steal. And what we steal, we waste, because it is more than we need. But the very crime is its punishment. It is poverty. It is war. It is a series of complicated political and religious beliefs that are no more than excuses. It is the unwillingness to […]
Why did the robin take a vigorous bath yesterday, on a thirty-five-degree winter afternoon? Did he do it to spite the incoming snow? And where is he now? Near the ice-rimmed pool, watching the white-bright world from under the rhododendron, warm to his red in its bed of dry leaves? At two this morning, I was awakened by snow-light. Out walking before seven, I saw a boy in front of […]
We experience the falling away of friends — not those claimed by death, but by circumstances, of those suffering disappointment in themselves or in us, or both, or some form of private, quietly held anxiety or embarrassment, or of those who have succumbed to weariness, habit, or boredom. Some we have known in the flesh, others through correspondence. And it seems all, whom we thought we understood so well, we […]
A distinct sense, while walking early in the morning through air that speaks of approaching snow, that each breath is greeting and farewell, and that each step is less a passing by, and more a passing through — that all I feel and see is a kindly breeze to please old bones, but never clings to flesh on which they’re hung — a present hum, a distant moan, a first […]
After visiting the massive black walnut tree in the park by the river, we continued half a mile along the trail to murky and muddy Goose Lake, which is swollen now, to the point that we didn’t need to go see it, it came to see us. Despite its name, we have yet to see a goose there. But there were a great many ducks, gliding across the surface and […]
One thing my wife and I have learned on our many hikes through the mountains, is that on the steep downhill parts of the trail, it’s best if we don’t try to break our momentum. Instead, we run. That way, when the hike is done and in the days following, there’s no pain in our feet and knees and ankles. Also, the alertness, attention, and coordination required is a stimulating […]
It’s easy enough to see ourselves in other members of the animal kingdom, especially those with eyes most like our own, those deep pools of joy and sorrow and all else, as found in the neighbor’s dog or on the hill in a thoughtful cow. All are mirrors, all profound. And why not too the wriggling worm, the thorny bush, the rugged stone? Are they not in turn each eyes […]
A few days ago, I paid the relatively modest sum of fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents for two pairs of reading glasses — one for books, the other for working here at the computer. The frames are round. I’ve never worn glasses with round frames before, but I’ve always liked them — not because they make me look like John Lennon, or Igor Stravinsky, or James Joyce, which they couldn’t, […]
William Michaelian 
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