William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Art’

Canvas 534 — The Power of Decency

Canvas 534 — February 6, 2015

The good in these pages has come at a price. The bad is the price. Both are dust. Both are feathers. Both are light on the wind. February 6, 2020   The Power of Decency I look at myself, my rapidly aging body, my limited range of ability, and ask, What, really, is within my power? And the answer is, Decency. At home, online, or in the grocery store, I […]

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Canvas 824 — Patience

Canvas 824 — January 17, 2017

I wonder, is it possible to cultivate a patience so gentle and profound that it outlives the flesh? Or is patience a pond we bathe in, and cannot defile with our death? We were greeted by a friendly, talkative woodpecker yesterday near Goose Lake — a young bird more intent on socializing than carrying on its regular craft and trade. Watching us from a bare trunk not five feet away, […]

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The Old Road

One Hand Clapping February 2004

Who knows why, but this morning I find myself thinking about jackrabbits, vineyards, and dust. These are but a few significant emblems of my childhood, which, rather than ending, gradually became the insanity I labor under today. Polliwogs, crawdads, slow-moving mossy water. The sound of our tractor in the distance, the tractor and my father pursued by a cloud of blackbirds looking for bugs, seeds, and worms. As I look […]

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Wisdom Remains

It needed many years, but when I finally realized that as a writer I would not be famous or successful in a way that would pay the bills, and when I understood what a lucky thing that was, the self-imposed burden of the idea fell away, leaving me light, free, ready, and glad for whatever may come. Painful as it was, I do not regret the process; I am not […]

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The Artist With the Frozen Teeth

How quickly my life is passing — as if each day it finds new means of escape, and is even now leaking out through my hair ends and fingertips — a joyful tingling sensation, light beyond light, darkness of a depth unimaginable — new birth, a second coming of age, my honeyed childhood on fresh warm bread just as the sun goes down — voices; wings; a strange starry canvas; […]

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