Honey? Sun? Meet my old friends, Strawberry and Robin. For it’s tea time with a shiny spoon, and Love and Death will be here soon, Unless they have forgotten. . . . Comes then a knock upon the door, and our hearts, now creaking open . . . [ 755 ]
Late each evening, the male towhee comes out from the rhododendron for one last look at the world and a little something to eat before bed. He is done singing for the day, and still mindful of the nest. Under the lilac, he finds something that intrigues him in the moss, and starts scratching like a chicken. The motion propels him forward several inches, then he hops back and pecks […]
Reckoning from the year 1776, this country is two hundred and forty-four years old. I have lived sixty-four of those years, roughly a quarter of that span. Reading the relatively brief history of this land, how can I not be stunned and saddened by the magnitude of the slaughter, theft, exploitation, and waste that marks each stage of its development? Certainly I am not surprised to find the country as […]
Early morning. Goose Lake is nearly as full as we’ve seen it and is sprouting lilies by the thousand, some just beginning to bloom. From our vantage point, the water hugging the far shore seems higher than the ground we’re on, the surface alive with yellow stars. Everything’s in a state of fragrant intensity; every life-form, animal, vegetable, and mineral, is rapt in the sacred rite of spring. We’re exalted […]
Lines arranged in such a way as to suggest a face but they’re not really lines and not arranged the way flesh holds us together one might almost see cloud paintings if they were there and we were here as we imagine ourselves to be where the sky and river meet oh it is such vanity to speak! [ 747 ]
I wrote the first line and thought haiku. Then it sprouted leaves. The last line fell from the oak’s highest branch. Each of its seventeen syllables is an acorn, at the center of which is mist. Survivor I was once like that — a crushed plant on the path, my flowers smiling back. Then I was an oak, with a swing tied to my lowest branch, and a hole […]
May it be said, that between sleeps, I was as drunk as any flower. [ 744 ]
I wonder if it’s understood that each page is written with a smile. I wonder if my saying so can possibly make this clear. In Season To pine is to yearn — love blesses the ripened cones. [ 743 ]
Do I know the names of the plants that spring up voluntarily around the house, each in tune with the season? Have I noticed them all? Am I aware of their culinary and medicinal uses? Do I see how they attract and benefit the wealth of other beings that live here and move among them? And do I appreciate these fellow mortals? Or do I only pull weeds, avoid mushrooms, […]
A Japanese maple has sprouted not far from our front door, a few feet west of its lacy red mother. It’s about two inches tall and has two small, perfect leaves, as red as red can be when red dreams of purple, evidence of the joy moving up and down inside its tiny thin trunk. Birth, growth, mist, dew, fog, frost, rain, wind — how alike our experiences have been! […]
William Michaelian 