Writing poetry all night. Some call it dream. Some call it sleep. In the morning the paper is blank. Snow has covered the ink. The graves. The hollow reeds. The bird tracks. Then you wake. Wolves I sweep the floor, but not beneath your feet. Your brow defends the shadow fallen there. Frail sun leaves ice unscathed and windows cold. Another winter just begun, bolder than the last. Remembered […]
When a child draws a face like this, we wonder at his gifts and curses, as if age were something art rehearses, and art what age reverses. [ 566 ]
How can we know each other if we don’t know ourselves? Between these sweet, holy, terrifying glimpses, how? Into each narrow crevice and wide chasm go the stories we tell. By lip and by eye we fill, by wrinkle and tongue. O dear one, maybe this flower will do, this shout ’cross the pond. This deep love in the dark night of our blind spaces. [ 564 ]
Two impressions met in the wind; each asked where the other had been; caught in a glance, both said; and passed again. Impressions Year upon year, fall upon fall, the maple leaves on the path remind me of hands. And one must die to know what it is to be held that way — die to the branch, die to the stem, die to the light, die to the […]
Twenty-six degrees. I’m reminded of a similar morning in my mother’s old age, when the furnace stopped working, and how for the entire time during its repair, I chatted with the workman while she stayed in bed to keep warm, snug and unperturbed beneath her grandmother’s quilt, secure in the haze of her thought and non-thought, as if her dementia were a pair of soft comfortable pajamas. Now my wife […]
Whatever its origin, I am part of this universe, however it may have been, or may be, scientifically and imaginatively defined. I feel neither significant nor insignificant in the face of this seeming immensity. I am not small. I am not large. I am as much star as I am snail or stone. I do not fear the unknown. I am part of the unknown. I do not believe in […]
I woke up thinking of something white — bones, or maybe snow — whites of varying hues. A bone in the snow would stand out. Like a drop of soup on Sunday School clothes. There was the sense, too, of having traveled a great distance — of having been an old man on a narrow high-mountain road, with but an apple and notebook to sustain me. And the notebook was […]
When a young man rhymes, we smile and nod. When old, he is forgiven. When in between, we shake our heads, and think we understand him. Or do we just pretend? Fool that I am, I can never tell. But I wish him well. I wish him well. For that is love, and this is heaven. Honeysuckle and Lemon Paneled wall in oaken hue, piano in corner near wood […]
There was one leaf which seemed to know the best, and so taught falling to the rest. And love’s been naked ever since. Love’s been naked, and that is all we need confess. October 14, 2019 I Could Fall for You I could fall for you, like the first leaf, before falling is fashionable, when everyone else is still clinging and green and oblivious to change. I could fall […]
Such beautiful apples! Which shall I bring home? I bend the bough. I pick the sun. [ 538 ]
William Michaelian 