It’s hard to know who’s crazy here — the subject, the poet, or the reader. Likely all three; because we all hunger for beauty, and are able to find it in unique places, and experience it and share it in unique ways. Whether this is also a definition of wisdom, is for each of us to decide. We’ll be wrong either way. That, too, is our gift. In my own […]
If this is my calling, so be it. If it’s simply something I like or love to do, again, so be it. And yet, at the beginning of my Perspective statement, which was written a dozen or so years later, and has remained unchanged to this day, I say, Each word I write and line I draw is an artist’s statement — not because I am an artist, but because […]
Footfall to the Nth degree equals Thunder. Such is the startling extent of my mathematical prowess. What I learn from this is that my writing is not of a loud, urban nature, and never will be. Everything is quiet and cushioned with moss. Where the acorn falls, an oak is allowed to grow. I am as old as the hills; a babe in arms; a satisfied smile after a bowl […]
Season is one of those words that goes to our origin in language; as we ripen, so do the words and the languages we use. At the same time, we are the words and languages we use. And, for better or for worse, the words and languages use us, and we are thereby revealed. This is how they change and grow, how they disappear or slowly crumble into proud obsolescence. […]
I collect sentences as I collected sticks and feathers when I was a boy, and then I forget them when night-time comes. How much of pain can be attributed to its original cause, and how much to the fear it will grow worse, and maybe not end? If I’m still alive at suppertime, I think I’ll set the table with the yellow dishes my parents often used when I was […]
My eldest brother has been gone a year and a half; our mother, ten years; our father, twenty-eight; our father’s mother and father, thirty-three; our mother’s father, sixty-nine; her mother, forty-two. Friends, family friends, relatives, loyal canine companions — the list is long. Teachers, schoolmates, barbers, insurance men, mechanics, storekeepers, fruit packers, janitors, farm help; doctors, dentists, accountants, farmers from the old neighborhood; grocery checkers, retired men in overalls, librarians, […]
I awoke early this morning feeling it was time to start the day. Then I read the kitchen clock — 2:58. So I stretched out on the floor again and slept for what felt like a good solid hour. The clock read 3:31. Ten minutes later, I was out in the street for a run. . A raft of lemons adrift at sea. The funny way you look at me. […]
It doesn’t take a very long sentence to say the light shining through the bars is not only beautiful, but enough. . [ 1807 ]
It must fall apart. It will fall apart. Oh, such beauty! . [ 1769 ]
The two little girls were surprised when I gave them each a sprig of lilac and asked them to smell the flowers. They were hushed, too, because in their boredom they’d torn them off, along with others and many tender leaves. And they were saddened, when I gently told them we’d given the plant to my mother many years ago, that it was her favorite, and that though she had […]
William Michaelian 