the sweet call to rest / the bare lilac / the mossy wall / the cedar chest December 23, 2021 . O Holy Night I do love the short days, the early closing in of the dark, the long nights beginning in the afternoon, the afternoons even earlier on the rooftops through the firs. There is so much light in everything everywhere I turn, in objects, faces, and books, the […]
Steady rain — three inches and counting. There are rows of tents in the park downtown, where, decades ago, families gathered and children played. Sometime during the night, I awoke from a dream in which I and some unknown but familiar others were approached and threatened by a vague form of hostility. As the danger grew nearer, we watched and waited near a glistening cedar. Suddenly the danger was gone, […]
Each day, I give thanks for the unknown and unexplained. My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes My mother saved our baby shoes, two handfuls of wedding rice in delicate nets, flowers, roses, brittle stems, in her cedar chest. And in all her years of not remembering, I wonder which she forgot the best. I wonder which she smiled at when she sat here dreaming in her make-believe and present-tense. […]
William Michaelian 