The weather turns cold, and here I am with my books again — the book of fallen leaves, and of the cloudless night and bright moon — the book of wordless days, and of the failing light in my work room — and glad I am, love, you will be home soon. October 9, 2019 A Warm Muffin and a Fresh Ripe Orange Imagine loving silence and solitude so […]
Though he doesn’t look like him, he reminds me of someone in Jerusalem, chanting in rooster’s voice behind the tomb, ’mid incense-cloud in cage-like room, Spirit moored in tattered robe, soiled well along the road, with dandruff, food, and candle wax, a kind of holy grime and filth, or prophet’s gold, Where I met him in the gloom, when again I was as now, not quite young and almost old, […]
The longer I live, the more like a dream the past becomes. I look at what were once the looming figures of my childhood, and they seem shrouded in mist; the mist is kind to them; it softens them; their bright outlines are hidden; the light has changed; it is as if, relieved of their bodies, I have been given their souls. October 7, 2019. Evening. [ 531 ]
We have never seen such a wealth of mushrooms. The entire neighborhood is covered with them. They have sprung up along borders, beneath hedges; they have erupted in flower pots and lawns; they crowd the sidewalks like bubbles on the rim of a glass. At the same time, as if to reveal their darker side, the older ones have already begun to rot. At a glance they look like stranded […]
Roll was called. The words lined up in rows. What do you want to be when you grow up? Pictures or poems? Pictures! they cried out. Poems! And from that day on they all were both. [ 528 ]
As near as we are to one another, there remain galaxies between us. I call this Touch. [ 527 ]
I left the room. He followed. I poured the coffee. He drank.
I said, What is it that you want? He said, Only what you need in me.
Canvas 1,242 — October 1, 2019
[ 526 ]
A family photograph in which I look like a lost soul, or perhaps a soul that just happens to be visiting a familiar body, as the eye scans a ledger with all its columns filled but one or two, or a star a lonely field, while those around me smile, sure of themselves. It’s October, love. Now tell me how you feel. Like you. You know I do. That’s why […]
If I let go of sorrow, and pain, should I not also be willing to let go of joy? For if I cling, do I not cling to everything? September 27, 2019. The last fine sliver of a waning moon. [ 524 ]
Nothing but a ring of sand traced by hand around the ankle. Nothing but a change of weather in the hair. Nothing but a wrist amiss and blind as daytime passion. Nothing but a rising tide . . . a fragrant breath . . . a vision there. September 26, 2019 [ 523 ]
William Michaelian 