Yellow and Lavender
First the colors, then the chrysanthemums. Or is it the other way around? . [ 1552 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Epitaphs’
Canvas 1,260 — Planted
Love, our little garden is in — in the ground, in the rain, in the wind. Canvas 1,260 May 6, 2022 . [ 1456 ]
Memorial
Willing to listen. Listening still. They gazed at the stone. At the grass and the ground. Felt the sun of his smile. . [ 1410 ]
Above and Below
In a graveyard, on a hill — Gravity, try to stop me now. November 16, 2021 . [ 1290 ]
A Little Boy’s Epitaph
Here is the marble, and here is the hand that held it just so, and aimed. April 13, 2021 . [ 1075 ]
Butterflies and Bee Toes
Am I being vague? I don’t mean to be. I love words. And they love me. We’re naturally hesitant, wondering, each time we meet, who will be the first to speak. What should we mean? We aren’t nails hammered through wood. We’re more like butterflies, or bees with pollen on our toes. Documents? Manifestos? We laugh. We can’t all be bibles or epitaphs. Some of us must be free. Recently […]
Saved
The sound of rain. The blessèd certainty of it — think as I will, believe as I will, act as I will, the rain will fall on my grave, and that is a blessing too: a blessing to the stone, should I have one, a blessing to the soft green grass that grows over me. And for an epitaph, these two words will do: Listening. Still. May they describe you. […]
Opposites
Living shadows, and the solid dreams they cast — The cedar and the lamp post, the school boy and the cloud: The perfect shroud — as if Cain had smiled at Abel, And Abel — had wept — and bowed. . [ 904 ]
Long Gray Train (I Pay the Porter)
I woke up in the middle of the night needing a sip of water. I walked down the hall, and as I passed through the dark sitting room, a sentence sprang to mind, or the beginning of a sentence — a phrase, a breath, a sound, a combination of sounds — a powerful suggestion, insistent, dreamlike, meaningful, profound, but I didn’t have the focus to pick up a pen and […]
Here Lies
The Dream of a Ridiculous Man — I wonder how many years have passed since I read this story aloud to my wife in the kitchen of the house we were renting at the time. Twenty? Twenty-five? The reading ended in tears — mine. And even then, it was not the first time I had read the story. Had Dostoevsky written nothing else, his mission on earth would have been […]
William Michaelian 