bumblebee across your path child laughing in the bath so ends the war just like that “Just Like That” Recently Banned Literature, April 30, 2016 The Fifth of July And here are the solemn graves of all the braves afraid of love and peace. [ 441 ]
At the rate I’m going, steady though it may be, it will take me several years to finish reading all fourteen volumes of Thoreau’s journal. I hope I have those years. But if I don’t, I’m happy to have had those leading up to them. And when I say hope, I mean I’m willing to live them if they’re given me, and that I understand very well they might not […]
Do I see what I think I see and hear what I think I hear, or are these towhees my thoughts, suddenly taking form and substance? The friendly birds arrive from nowhere while I’m watering the geraniums. Just a few feet away, the male hops from the moss into the birdbath and starts splashing; the female sings from the birch above. And what of the geraniums themselves, and the moss, […]
Love is light in the palm of the beloved, and a bee’s in the dew on the rose. June 30, 2019 Epitaph what strange liquor is this? who poured it into my glass? why do I love its flavor? why can I not resist? Songs and Letters, October 12, 2006 Another Song I Know, Cosmopsis Books, 2007 [ 437 ]
It can happen any time — one instant you’re in the warm-water wash, and the next you’re a sheet on the line. four hands two cups of tea table a dream pot a bouquet memory For Robert, Mark, and Stanley, June 29, 2019 [ 435 ]
We’ve heard a number of times that a solitary blueberry bush won’t produce fruit on its own, that at least one other must be growing and blooming nearby to ensure pollination. And yet we have one plant and it produces fruit, and the nearest others that we’re aware of are hundreds of feet away at a house one street to the south and two houses to the west, with structures, […]
Late yesterday afternoon, a thunderstorm came to call. Naturally, I opened the door and let her in. One by one and all at once, she explored the dim gray rooms. And now, where she’s been is where I am, and where she is is where I will be, soon. Ghost frames, windows, walls. Leave them up, or take them down. Shake out the linen and the quilts. June 27, 2019 […]
Well before daylight, in the sublime quiet, reading the letters of a thoughtful young man who later lost his life in the Civil War at the age of twenty-nine: Charles Russell Lowell, nephew of the great writer and poet, James Russell Lowell. Then, suddenly, raindrops — so few in number it reminds me of my mother sprinkling water on her ironing. June 26, 2019 The Sunlight on My Mother’s […]
We do not know what we will be called upon to do.
And it is not unusual at all that we do not know we are doing it.
Canvas 537 — February 19, 2015
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All too often, those of us who call ourselves writers speak of the books we read as if their very mention were an indication of our learning, depth, and worth. I speak about them because I love them, knowing full well that even after they are read, I will be at a loss to explain the profound or mean effect they have had on me, my understanding, and my thinking. […]
William Michaelian 