In the park by the river, a walk through the old walnut grove. Yellow now. Yellow cottonwoods, too. Yellow brambles. Yellow squirrels. Yellow chatter. Yellow nuts. Yellow holes. Yellow mounds. Yellow talk. Yellow love. Yellow clouds. Yellow Fever Fig leaves so bright, the birds don’t sleep at night. Poems, Slightly Used, October 23, 2009 [ 169 ]
Pizzicato
What larger thing
in a smaller space
than that which
proclaims
the heart
Poems, Slightly Used, May 9, 2009
Canvas 1,139 — January 18, 2018
[ 165 ]
In a forest of people, it can be quite dark near the ground. It can be quite light, too, even without the sun. Museum Piece In need of a few days off, I spent them among old trees that were whispering terrible secrets. When I returned home no one could understand me; I was begged to come in from the yard. Doctors were called; I pummeled them with cones. […]
I’ve been at it so long, I suppose it’s inevitable that often, when I sit down to work, I’m reminded of other things I’ve written. I’ve covered a lot of ground — not always well, certainly, but the old lines and images keep surfacing and reappearing, and it’s not unusual for them to arrive in the form of a lesson. One of the greatest of these lessons is, Don’t be […]
In a recent letter, a friend told me he’s reading the English translation of a diary by Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, an 800-page tome published in 2012 by Yale University Press. He found it in Santa Barbara, at a bookstore named Chaucer’s. Naturally, I would like to have a copy, although I probably wouldn’t get around to reading it for thirty years. I’ll be ninety-two then. Will I still be […]
The arrival of fall has me thinking about our closets again. The urge to dismantle the stacks of crated material, and to throw most of it away, has returned. Some of it, though, I have to keep: the old music books and sheet music from my piano-lesson days, for instance, and drawings our kids made. But the refuse of my writing life is another matter — the old redundant notebooks […]
Here is another “yellow poem” from the old age of my youth. My father left us in 1995. For My Father Of the yellow in a wet fig leaf the ear makes sound of falling rain Poems, Slightly Used, October 12, 2010 [ 124 ]
Fifteen words, seventeen syllables — this is one of several “yellow poems” I’ve found while looking through Poems, Slightly Used. It was written October 21, 2009, a bit further into autumn than we are now. But this year it seems the switch to fall has already been thrown. And if you happen upon this note in some other season, I hope love is all you know. Birches She laughs […]
This poem and Canvas 1,183, a drawing made earlier this year, look out and speak ever so softly from facing pages in the Fall 2018 issue of Akitsu Quarterly. Imagine, the journey from pixel to print, made in only eight years — about the same time it takes a snowflake to fall, and ash to turn a poet’s hair gray. Memento Mountain snow valley ash a hand a pen […]
Almost all of my writing is done very early in the morning. “Saving Grace” is no exception. And yet I remember, or think I remember, that upon its completion, I felt an entire day had passed, and that the day was a lifetime. Such is memory. Such is rain. Such is writing. Sometimes you must leave almost everything out, to keep anything in. Saving Grace Today it’s the rain, […]
William Michaelian 