On the road, the notion of time evaporates so quickly, I have to stop and think to know what day it is, and even then I’m not quite sure. A minute, mile, or hour farther on, the fact is gone again, along with its meaning and its need. We left on Monday. That much I know. But I hardly prize the information. If today is Thursday, the name is the […]
All our then and all our now, caught up in a butterfly migration. August 7, 2019 [ 473 ]
If there is a spirit world, why not this one? Late yesterday evening, the crows half-flew, half-drifted every which way on the southwest breeze, which was strong enough to make their frequent treetop landings a challenge. This one? No, this one! Here? No, over there! Haw! — and yet the grand and glorious silence was never broken. The clover was drunk on sunlight. Now it’s snoring in the dark. And […]
In his journal, Emerson writes of walking with Hawthorne, talking with Thoreau, Carlyle’s latest book, and Tennyson’s new poems. In mine, I write of you, in terms of my own plain self. And this is our wealth: that we are each a funny blend of science and superstition, of pain, nerve, and luck. And this is our grief — the loss of dear Waldo, Emerson’s five-year-old son. August 4, 2019 […]
Time? How can I define it if I don’t know what or where it is? And yet all my life, I’ve casually and confidently used the word itself. Very well — but I must never make it my defense or my excuse. Little children — all of the rocks in the avalanche have names. Their meanings will come, by and by, brought by butterflies and babbling brooks. August 2, 2019 […]
To accept the differences in children, loved ones, strangers, and friends, is one thing; to give thanks for them is another. Do both. And include, then forget, yourself. The moon is on the wane; and, once again, no one has the heart to tell her. A furry black bee is reveling in the blue flowers of the Agapanthus. Agapanthus: love, flower. July 29, 2019 The Greeting Now the greeting […]
Potted yard-gnome in a clump of dry grass girl at a window of unwashed glass and the shopkeeper turns it over and says look at the back here is the artist’s signature but I see bird tracks and arthritic hands the colored paths of an old butter knife and the child at the window is an old woman now so beautiful down from the shelf and the shopkeeper smiles when […]
Politics is a filthy sponge. Do you want it in your sink? Do you want it in your mind? Yesterday evening, after two warm days, a cleansing ocean wind rushed into the valley once again. This morning the air is sweet and still. And I sense something else, which makes me say these words aloud: autumnal understanding. If I do not return your wave, is the loss not mine? For […]
In this its second summer, the apricot tree is making great progress. One thing I love about it is that it does not need to leave its place to check on mine. Call it patience, call it wisdom, or a simple twist of fate, it knows I will come and reveal all. Hand on wood, leaf on face, the shady space still grows. And I suppose that makes me human […]
How stirring, the seagulls’ cries from the Claggett Creek wetlands behind the houses facing north along Verda Lane. I heard their voices several times yesterday, both morning and afternoon, borne, like the scent of home-cooking, on the southwest breeze. Add to this, winging toward them at dawn, the great blue heron, silent, generally alone, though occasionally in the spacious company of another of its kind. I can almost see the […]
William Michaelian 