A slow run, the last sliver of moon just rising, the streets quiet and calm. With the arrival of the summer heat, our former high temperatures are now the lows, even as the days, little by little, grow shorter, and the cloudless, starry nights, as if by their own magic, add unto themselves. The grass in front of the house has yielded again to clover. The bare feet rejoice in […]
Dragonfly season here is a show of grace; color; delicacy. The insects rise and pause and land with an ethereal weightlessness we don’t associate with the much larger dragonflies of our youth in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where they stood on air and rumbled about in our classrooms at school, entering and leaving freely through the open doors and unscreened windows. During the warm months, which seemed to last most […]
Illuminated by my faithful dragonfly lamp, a tiny insect just flew by, then disappeared into the dark regions of the desk behind the computer screen. Each of us, engaged in the doings of our lives. There are days I remember, from morning to night, such seemingly forgettable, unimportant things. I think this will be one of them. For how can I be sure that this will not be the last […]
Trees are not only trees: they pretend to be trees. They know I am used to seeing and thinking of them as trees, and are kind enough to act accordingly. At the same time, like me, they are what they are by virtue of a process that disperses and combines everything in the universe to arrive at something familiar, yet always original and new. And so now, in effect, it […]
Someday, when you’re a dragonfly standing on air, And your transparent blue wings are all that you wear, I’ll be a gravestone with a waterfall near; Now sleep on, child, sleep without fear, Sleep, my love, my sweet, My dear. Recently Banned Literature, January 10, 2018 . [ 1147 ]
The dragonflies are out again. Yesterday two landed on stakes in the dahlia bed to sun themselves. Each, after resting for several seconds, would lift off, hover briefly, then land again. They did this three or four times, until one finally decided to change stakes, flying up near my face before landing. The dragonflies were small and of a reddish color. As easy as it would be to find out, […]
The tragedy of opinion is that it is mistaken for truth. The tragedy of truth is that it is mistaken for opinion. July 25, 2017 Colophon and here facing east on a maple leaf a blue dragonfly passed the night Recently Banned Literature, July 25, 2017 [ 817 ]
Such a lovely dragonfly . . . ah, very well, I was too near after all — too near, too long . . . but what are time and space in the garden? and this newly planted cedar stake . . . the bleeding wound it makes . . . and the ground, which still remembers how to heal . . . [ 794 ]
It’s summer, and a path is worn from the front door, through the clover, past the shade garden — that quiet harbor of ferns and moss — beneath the pine branch that makes us duck, to the grapevine, apricot, and blueberry bush. And if that does not seem like much, beware, my friend, observe: for that is how paradise is lost. Dragonfly with one wing gone, swarm of ants bright-red […]
During my San Joaquin Valley childhood, there were still a few boxcars used as homes, tucked away in odd corners on useless bits of land. Nestled in mounds of chickweed, with old blown tires and chickens in the yard, they seemed like seeds scattered by a giant’s hand, or fruit fallen from a tree in a homegrown fairy tale. Life inside could not have been comfortable, too cold in winter, […]
William Michaelian 