I seek no other heaven. If this vast wonder-garden is a perfect god’s creation, what improvement would it need? Paradise is paradise, as far as I can see. And if it isn’t perfect, if it happened of itself or is here by some other cause, my judgment of it is bound to share the same imperfection, because I am a part of it. In this garden, the grasses come and […]
It’s a contradiction to speak of progress, spiritual or otherwise, and then complain about having to do the dishes. The little things one resists, once seen in their true light, are understood as blessings, death included. Our lives outlive us — by one smile, one poem, one soothed pain, one axe, one gun, one malicious stroke of the pen, the present flesh recoils, and mortal breath is thrilled again. June […]
Sometimes, when the bow is not taut, the arrow flies much farther. The Living and the Dead A pair of starlings are feasting on something in the maple tree outside my window. The tree has just begun to bloom. Its larger branches are covered with moss, some of it old, much of it new. The birds have found something to eat in the moss — newly hatched insects, or […]
Honey? Sun? Meet my old friends, Strawberry and Robin. For it’s tea time with a shiny spoon, and Love and Death will be here soon, Unless they have forgotten. . . . Comes then a knock upon the door, and our hearts, now creaking open . . . [ 755 ]
May it be said, that between sleeps, I was as drunk as any flower. [ 744 ]
The world has lost a great poet — so it’s often said. And yet isn’t death what finally and most fully reveals a great poet’s gift to this world? And so when the poet dies, wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the world has gained him, or her, instead? A Lesser Poet I will be remembered as a lesser poet, if at all — a clumsy ox […]
Death, or politics? Politics have neither death’s dignity nor purpose; and they lack death’s sublime, optimistic future; for after death, that which is once said to have been living, goes on living in myriad forms and ways; whereas politics are an accumulation of toxic waste matter that is dangerous to all living things. That politics often cause death, is reason enough to set them aside. Why sacrifice my precious energy […]
A day for tea. Not one cup, or two, but three. A trinity. Prophecy? Too, it well may be. An acute form of language, Or memory. Imagined, or worse. A blessing, a curse. A death, a truth, a fiction. A doorway. A wise oak. Surrender. Confession. Birth. March 31, 2020 [ 712 ]
I wonder how old I was when the idea first reached me that our departed loved ones might still be near and looking on. I don’t remember having thought of it myself, or it ever being suggested by my parents. I might have read it somewhere. I did a lot of reading in my youth. I find the idea poetically appealing, but I’ve never thought of it as either definitely […]
Early morning. Fresh air, dark clouds, robin-song. And I ask myself — In this paradise, if I am not ready to die, have I ever really lived? March 25, 2020 Blind Fishermen It’s been so long — I think of writing you today. Do you think of writing me? — And do you wonder what to say? So many letters set out this way — Like little rafts at […]
William Michaelian 