William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Earth’

The Sweetest, Ripest Fruit

The primitive human in me doesn’t want to be sitting here at a keyboard. It wants to be gathering wood or picking berries. If I must tell stories, let it be near a fire, sung as a poem, or pounded out on a drum. . In life as in the library — may the sweetest, ripest fruit always be just out of reach. . A cloudy morning for the eclipse. […]

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An Ancient Land in Ancient Oracles

A clear, starry morning, temperature under fifty degrees. Planets visible: Venus, Uranus, Jupiter, Saturn. Earth, too, was visible. We speak of setting foot on the moon, or Mars, as if doing so would be more wonderful than setting foot on the earth, as if the earth itself is passé, and we’re bored by something we can and must do every day. But if we feel this way about the earth, […]

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If You Can Love Me

Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. Grass is my pillow, breeze is my song. Sit here beside me, until you move on. Sky is my window, earth is my door. Come and be with me, come and be poor. If you can love me, I’ll love you the more. And if you can love me, I’ll love you the […]

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Art and Expression

It seems a shame to impose myself on a clean white page. It’s like being the first to leave tracks in newly fallen snow, or where someone has carefully raked a shaded path — unforgivable acts, though unavoidable, perhaps. And what of the garden space beside the driveway? If I’m still alive when the weather warms at last, shall I fill it again with seeds and plants, or let nature […]

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Earth Natives

Moonlight, streetlight, starlight. I saw the skunk again, just as I was starting my run. With its tail held high, it was crossing the street from the yard of one neighbor to that of another. When I was done, I met it again coming down the driveway of the house just west of ours. This time its tail was down. In no hurry at all, it crossed the street again. […]

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Tenderness

I go on reading things in Emerson’s journal he thought would never see print. And yet here they are, more than a century and a half later, and so here is Emerson. Almost word for word, I remember many things said by my grandparents. And so here they are. Friends, parents, relatives, animals, places, here they are, to be forgotten and remembered for however long. And here we are. Glaciers. […]

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