William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Books’

Pie Crust

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, […]

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Spirit at the Switch

Stars and low-racing clouds. A spirit at the switch, grinning fall. My eldest brother is alive again. He’s forgotten to bring his driver’s license. Standing beside our mother’s old car, I tell him I’d better drive, though we have no particular destination in mind. With the arrival of rain and cooler temperatures, I’m reminded that the easiest way to adjust to seasonal weather changes is to spend as much time […]

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The Other Side of Silence

The rise and fall. Doomed to fail are nations founded on the belief that people can take what they want, and sell what doesn’t belong to them. Likewise, individual lives. Throw it away. Out of sight, out of mind? Or, out of sight, out of our minds? Thoreau’s journal, February 19, 1854. Many college text-books which were a weariness and a stumbling-block when studied, I have since read a little […]

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Sweep and Sleep

I’m not only a floor-sweeper, I’m a floor-sleeper. And I’ve never swept, or slept, better. I sweep my dreams, those I can remember, and I sleep my broom. We both are kind to dustpans. Over the years, I’ve found all mattresses to be back-breakers. Finally, it dawned on me that humans aren’t really meant to sleep that way. Now I can stretch out anywhere, on any firm surface, drift off […]

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A Larger Frame

I’m thinking about reading The Razor’s Edge, by W. Somerset Maugham. The book was mailed to me by a poet-acquaintance in 2011, while he and his wife were in the American Southwest during their extensive travels around the U.S. In 2010, he shipped me a generous gift of 173 books, some of which can be seen in the photo below. As often happens with fellow bloggers, we never met in […]

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From the Flower

A falling star — a petal bright, from the flower. * Some books I leave open, so that during daylight hours, I can read a few lines from them in passing. Diaries, journals, letters, poetry, too — and it’s all poetry, beginning with the light coming in through the window. Or call it pollen, or honey, because the words coat the wings, and sweeten the tongue. * How many things […]

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Nothing Easier

The shedding birch catkins have attracted the bushtits. Brief as it was, theirs was a joyous visit this morning. Music by the pound. There must be at least forty pounds’ worth in the plastic tub — lesson books, sheet music, and various bound collections. I took out a few — a book of scales in my old piano teacher’s hand, complete with fingering; two books for new beginners; and books […]

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The Mask

Warm, cloudy, humid. Fires east, fires south. And here I am, recognizing once again the sheer luxury it is to be able, for so long, to pursue my tiny line of thinking — to read my books, to write my notes and poems and then pretend them to the world — for pretending and publishing are much alike — tho’ the mask I wear is nearly identical to what it’s […]

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