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 ]
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 ]
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 […]
He’s kissing a girl who’s been packing peaches, elbow-deep in fuzz. She’s damp with sweat and has tired breath — it’s hot and the hours are long. In the house, the old farmer almost sleeps through lunch. His wife watches through the window — she knows the boy — but of course it’s his parents she really knows. And anyway, it’s not her daughter, the pretty girl from town, just […]
I do not carry a notebook or a pen. If I write it down, what then? Best to leave it be, and let it pass through and over me. And even that is arrogant. As if I will be, a moment hence, what I thought I was, and who I think I am. Yet I write it now — a willful child, a fleeting man — a penance of the […]
Experience is a word. Words are beautiful.
And that is why I’m a pilgrim in this world.
Canvas 422 — August 31, 2014
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If my age is equivalent to the number of times the earth has traveled around the sun since I was born, how old would I be if I lived on another planet, or in another galaxy, or in another universe altogether? And isn’t this what I already do? The degree to which I resist things as they are — that might be a more accurate rendering of my age. The […]
William Michaelian 
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