Over the years, our mailman has become quite friendly. A shaggy, white-haired, white-bearded fellow who more than once has posed as Santa Claus, he stops most days in the shade of our juniper to shuffle his trays of mail before continuing on his route. He sees nothing but comedy in his job, and in the inner workings of the post office, in his view, the ill logic, the inefficiency, the […]
When I say this is all a dream, I mean everything — the entire universe, all of history, everything known and unknown, the rapidly approaching end of life as we know it as it’s absorbed by artificial intelligence — not just the rise and fall of my own brief experience measured out in days and nights, breaths and heartbeats, acts of kindness and thoughtless habits. The flesh falls away, the […]
Yesterday, not quite asleep and not quite awake in a chair after lunch, I thought, What a wonderful dream it would be if I dreamed I was awakened by my mother, and found myself a boy again, with the sudden knowledge that what I had so long assumed was my life and its many experiences, was really just a dream. All my life, it’s been this way — I’m a […]
Shall we examine our illnesses, and give them truer, more meaningful names, such as The North Wind, The Reminder, and The Teacher? Then we might say, I am visited by The North Wind, or, I am thankful for The Reminder. We might say, I learned great things from The Teacher. I have The Mystery. I do not fear The End. We Might Say. December 29, 2021. Poems, Notes, and Drawings. […]
Up now for almost an hour. Dark out. The neighbor’s light through the kitchen window. It’s all a surprise, yet to fade. How, or why, Am I — awake? ~ [ 2046 ]
Am I really as simple as Cool Water suggests? Can I find contentment in using our grandson’s little blue watering can? He’s fourteen now, and so was seven when this was written. He has since outgrown the watering can, but I haven’t. I still use it every chance I get, and find it as cheering and heartening as ever. He thinks I’m crazy; I like that, because it’s further proof […]
Blessed to forget the rest — why, I wonder, do so many of my phrases read like epitaphs? And these stock words and images: who can count the number of times I’ve written the word peach, joy, waterfall, or blessing? Surely this means something, as do multiple allusions to madness, which seem almost to signify some kind of code, or shortcut way of proclaiming I am one with the universe, […]
Upon returning from her early-morning walk, she said, “A raccoon, as big as a small bear.” . Rushing water, fluid sand, where the stream meets the sea. For an instant, there are two of me. But to keep my balance as I cross, I must mind my feet. . Potted the coleus cuttings. . Read chapters twenty-eight and twenty-nine of Middlemarch. . . . It is an uneasy lot at […]
The moon, hidden by a bright, sprawling cloud — an illuminated island, complete with inlets and shore, a drifting, conscious continent. Yesterday evening, and into the early morning hours, there was a very active thunderstorm. What was left of the day’s heat was quickly washed away, the air sweetened with rain mixed with small hail. The crickets became lightning bugs. At one point we heard laughter in the street; this […]
’t is a conscious winter, when the rain is bright and the stars go out . [ 1639 ]
William Michaelian 