If my past is a fiction, and my present a dream, my future could be anything. If my past is a dream, and my present its awakening, the future has much to explain — And that much must be little, if it means what it seems. Such is the play. Such is the scene. To write is to be written. To speak is to sing. Where the mind fails, I […]
For every heart-breaker, there is a love-maker; for every flower, an hour — a death, a life. Death Treads Softly Death treads softly past the nurse reading at her desk. When morning comes, another bed is empty. Winter is long, the old folks let go one by one. We strip their sheets and scrub the floors, send their bundles to the laundry. But the ones who live are hungry. […]
There are three sides to a coin — heads, tails, and its round enduring edge. There is its smell, there is its taste, there is its weight, there is its heft. There is its tactile depth — its diametric likeness to a map. There is its real, temporary, imagined worth — the things it represents. There is my hand. There is my pocket. There is my life. There is my […]
I wonder, is it possible to cultivate a patience so gentle and profound that it outlives the flesh? Or is patience a pond we bathe in, and cannot defile with our death? We were greeted by a friendly, talkative woodpecker yesterday near Goose Lake — a young bird more intent on socializing than carrying on its regular craft and trade. Watching us from a bare trunk not five feet away, […]
Back to the falls — but not the same falls, no; never have we seen the water rushing so madly; never have we heard it thundering so loudly on the rocks below; the creek in torrent, fed by laughing streams dancing across the path on one side, and spilling over ferns, moss, rocks, and downed branches on the other; a dusting of snow all around; the temperature about thirty-five degrees; […]
We always think it’s someone else. But it isn’t.
O hate! O love! O death! O war!
January 8, 2020
Canvas 1,128 — January 8, 2018
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How quickly my life is passing — as if each day it finds new means of escape, and is even now leaking out through my hair ends and fingertips — a joyful tingling sensation, light beyond light, darkness of a depth unimaginable — new birth, a second coming of age, my honeyed childhood on fresh warm bread just as the sun goes down — voices; wings; a strange starry canvas; […]
Just before waking this morning, I saw an old friend who died in 2010. We were in a used bookstore. I said, “Were you asleep?” And he said, “The truth is, I’ve been sleeping far too much lately.” Recently Banned Literature, January 5, 2013 Ten Years Whether they return in the flesh or as memory, old friends often have a ghostly, disorienting way about them — especially those who […]
The life of a memory, carried from childhood into old age. The lives of many, interwoven, and the fabric they make. The cloth wears at the edges; has holes; takes on stains. Here is a new one . . . and now death intervenes! [ 605 ]
Closing out this quiet round of winter record-keeping, the present offering follows “So Many Angels” and “Between the Ivy and the Big Rhododendron.” I wonder what the old cemetery looks like now, and if it remembers me. A crazy question, I guess. Of course it does. When I Stand When I stand, I marvel at the almost-feeling where my appendix used to be. It’s as if its ancient forgotten […]
William Michaelian 