The budding lilac isn’t concerned with my memory of last year’s bloom. All is abundance, even in dearth. There are dogs I see every day which no longer bark when I pass. I see a fairly large white one through a living room window; he sits upright in a chair like a human, his right paw on the armrest. He watches and makes no comment. At dusk I meet a […]
If I were a bluebell, or a tree in the mist . . . and I am, when we meet like this. And when I’m ripe and ready to fall? What need of fear on my way to the ground? Indeed, what need, even now? April 22, 2019 Wayside There appeared on the cold winter road a butterfly, Which came to rest on my cane. The cane, feeling her […]
The entire range of our emotions and activities, the worlds dreamt, built, and destroyed, the wars fought and the sublime accomplishments — is it not all true to our species? And is it not also true that if we survive, we may one day outgrow our cosmic, troubled youth? Would it not be just as true to our kind to live in peace in a world without borders, nations, and […]
When I cut off the old fronds of the ferns, mold is my reward. Later, I celebrate with double and triple sneezes, violent enough to rattle the dishes. In the center of the mound, the new fronds are unfurling, prehistoric, hairy, and willing. I find treasure therein — needles, twigs, and shells; fir and filbert sprouts. The Creeping Jenny is rampant under the white birch. If not trimmed a bit, […]
The paint is peeling on a two-story house I walk by every day. The window frames are in rough condition, and many of the slats in their decorative shutters are missing or have settled at odd angles. The double door in front is scarred and worn. The man who lives there is in the same condition. We’ve met a few times as I was passing and he was rolling out […]
Beautiful, singing words — somehow you end up stacked like bricks. “Poet’s Lament” Songs and Letters, October 13, 2008 Together, Alone As deep as a worm, as radical as a plow. May it serve as a proverb for now. A church and its graveyard, at the convergence of roads. A cart ’neath an oak, in the hollow of a palm. A poet with a shovel, near the end of […]
As individuals we are often our own worst adversaries, asking of ourselves nothing and demanding everything. There comes, though, a day of reckoning, when our dead and wounded must be carried off the battlefield, and another, more enlightened approach considered. We may think of it as an act of personal diplomacy. And yet, as private as it might seem, our decision to listen to ourselves in light of our natural […]
Caught in a thunderstorm running home from the vineyard with their hoes crowned by chickweed where metal meets wood the two held fast by a nail sealed with blood Memory If memory is a bridge, what does it cross, how long is its span, and how high above? If it is a graveyard, whose bones does it contain? If it is a church, who is nailed to the cross? […]
If I am not grateful in the knowledge that I will die, and possibly suffer untold, nigh unbearable pain between now and that time, then of what worth is my gratitude for my relative good health, and for an abundance of fluffy clouds, fresh air, and sunshine? Can such conditional gratitude really be gratitude at all? And yet even that is a start, I suppose. If I am alive in […]
It’s been years since I’ve taken a pill of any kind. In my experience, pills, particularly those meant to lessen or drive away pain, create their own set of conditions and demands, until they finally cause more pain than suggested them in the first place, as well as other side effects. And so now, if I happen to hurt, I simply go on about my business. I do my work, […]
William Michaelian 