Life is a dream to one, a harsh reality to another; a field of flowers, a prison yard. And here is one of the guards, who thinks it is both, watching a butterfly as it passes over the wall. The guard is killed in an accident on the way home. Somehow, he remembers it all. There are flowers at his funeral. They are in bunches and rows, and they remind […]
The affairs of humans, certainly — but not exclusively. The stars, the birds, the flowers, the wind. Mountains. Whales. Insects. Worms. Wild grains. These things are all to be considered, and each has something to say. A mountain range publishes glaciers and snowstorms, rivers and forests; it does so simply, reliably, and without bias — it tells the complete truth, and nothing but the truth. This is the claim of […]
Early morning. From North Falls to Winter Falls via the Rim Trail, then down into the canyon, still in shadow. Soon after beginning the descent we meet a raven as big as the next two or three crows, its beak and head capable of lunacy and wisdom, prophecy and mayhem. Its flight up from the path to a mossy low maple branch is an action deliberately made and slowly taken, […]
Up at three-thirty, for no particular reason, other than, like an oft-reheated meal, the sleeper was done, and then some. But the night joys are great ones, with dawn coming on. Dawn, the grand assumption. It is a cricket-morning, the first of the late-summer, early-fall season. Crickets cast no votes. They do not need mail boxes or polling places. They have no gerrymandered districts. They have rhythm and purpose. They […]
If the individual plants in our patch of grass were people or trees, how much space would they need to survive and thrive? They are a multitude. However, I walk through or in a forest or a crowd, and I walk on a lawn; I am small in one instance, large in another; a humble supplicant; the possessor of great strength and power. And always, I have a choice of […]
Back to the falls. In the dry chilly atmosphere, mosquitoes nod from their bar stools, too numb to bite. The old maples along the stream are moss-covered enchantment. One leans far over the water, clinging to the eroded path with exposed gnarled roots, watched over closely by another concerned for its welfare, each knowing the demise of the other would bring it more light — a study in grace, a […]
We don’t plant our sunflowers, they plant themselves. Each year they’re different. This year almost all have multiple heads, a few with dark centers, most with light. Many have lateral growth, each branch ending with its own head or heads, some blooming all the way to the ground. And there’s one very rugged plant with only one head. The plant is about five feet tall, but now that its seeds […]
A bumblebee asleep on a flower dreams of the last time he danced. August 9, 2020 Bouquet Dahlia buds every which way all pointing homeward and then you say here my love Recently Banned Literature, September 26, 2016 [ 833 ]
I walked early yesterday morning in a heavy mist, grateful the ocean had come for a visit. In August, with the grapes ripening, the peaches rising, the berries falling, and the tomatoes fat on the vine, I feel as conscious as a bee winging home to the hive, bearing his load of pollen. I feel as sad and as serious as a clown’s smile. I feel joy. The mist gave […]
It must be difficult for a flag-waver, virus-spreader, and bigot to imagine himself on a long journey in the hold of a disease-infested seafaring kettle, and emerging later to stand on the auction block; it must be difficult for him, or her, to imagine the lash of the whip, the iron ring, or passing even one day as a slave in the fields. But once he does — for I […]
William Michaelian 