Bury me with the old gray hat. Let it rest on my chest and cover my hands, that each new spring may imagine them. When Last In the Dooryard Now the lilac’s in bloom. Have y’noticed how flowers use their voices, And how some need only whisper To be heard? Recently Banned Literature, April 26, 2018 [ 364 ]
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 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 […]
The written word and studied line, or a sweet caress, in tenderness, the last objection set aside? [ 359 ]
A setting moon, like a setting hen. And both of them brood. The seemingly nondescript plumage of birds viewed from a distance, and then the sudden revelation of their bright markings and colors when they are near. In the same way, people we are accustomed to seeing from a distance, and the surprise of their features in detail when we happen to meet them in person. Assuming one’s hair serves […]
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 […]
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, […]
High water has driven the homeless from their encampment on the west side of the river. In that place alone, they number in the hundreds. They turn up everywhere — downtown, in parks, under bridges, in the public library, in the hospital half-starved and with nasty infections. Moss grows on asphalt. Daffodils make way for tulips. How high is high moral ground? What is it like to live there? No […]
See how the fig tree declares her passion before her leaves are on, how the dogwood, winded down, is bridal in her bloom, how the birds, busy in your branches, have shaken you, and flown. “Revelation” Recently Banned Literature, April 22, 2014 Twelve Poems, Poets International Blossom, v. Carry me in, carry me out — you, a shoe, and I, a wet petal on your sole. [ 346 ]
William Michaelian 