Moonlight, streetlight, starlight. I saw the skunk again, just as I was starting my run. With its tail held high, it was crossing the street from the yard of one neighbor to that of another. When I was done, I met it again coming down the driveway of the house just west of ours. This time its tail was down. In no hurry at all, it crossed the street again. […]
Dark, rich, thick, smooth — a not-quite-full six-ounce cup of pour-over coffee. Dream coffee, slowly consumed. Coffee in the bright light shadow of a setting full moon. The fir tree has a very heavy new crop of green pitch-glistening cones, which, as they mature, are shedding bits of themselves. When I was working under it the pieces fell around me and on me. The garden is engulfed in purslane, which […]
Late yesterday evening a very active thunderstorm passed through this part of the valley, moving northwest from the Cascades, bringing with it a spectacular display of lightning and enough thunder to wake the dead. And yet somehow, I fell asleep before it was over — but not before I heard the music of heavy rain landing on the roof and on the plants outside. That, and being generally exhausted from […]
The grass behind the house is on the wild side. Shaded most of the day, it stays green if left alone. No mowing, no water. Churchyard grass. Perfect for imagined goats. Pick things up, then set them down again. Sticks, leaves, stones. Rainbows. Poems. The days and nights themselves. A swarm of bushtits in the cedar. Some are upside down. What’s the world to them? Outside in. Inside out. The […]
The cedar dreams the sky. That’s why the children are outside. Canvas 1,261 May 6, 2022 . [ 1457 ]
Men seek wisdom, sunflower sprouts spring from the warming soil. * Rich or poor, for your own sake, ask yourself what you would do if money weren’t a concern. * Love is the sound the shovel makes. * Birch clock: the dead branch, the singing bird. * Cedar clock: the low branch, the rope swing. * Old or young, ask yourself what you would do if time weren’t a concern. […]
Yesterday afternoon I cleared the driveway of snow with one of the old manure shovels my father and grandfather used on the farm during the Great Depression and after the Second World War, and which we continued to use in later years, and which now reside, along with several other tools from that earlier time, in an old barrel in the little shed behind the house. While I was out, […]
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, […]
Forty-seven degrees. Across the street, the big bare tree behind the neighbor’s house is full of starlings, so many it sounds like spring. Earlier, from the front window, I saw a squirrel jump from the edge of the roof into the cedar. Such a leap would not have been possible a year ago — the tree has grown that much. In that spirit, I am making a small leap myself. […]
Cedar, juniper, green maple, red maple, pine. Arborvitae, crape myrtle, rhododendron, barberry, apricot. Blueberry, grape, fig, birch, fir. Grasses. Such, in varying numbers, constitute the perennials on this relatively average-sized suburban lot. Hosta, fern, moss. Lilac. Ivy. Rose. To arrive at a complete list, one would need to comb the area with notebook in hand, to look carefully, see calmly, patiently, making it the work of a lifetime, his own […]
William Michaelian 