Canvases 393 and 394 — Thoughtful Smudges
Thoughtful smudges done before, after, and at the same time as each other; they might be friends; they might be brothers; they might be locks or keys or mirrors; I see clouds through years. [ 783 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Friends’
Not Dying
This piece, another entry from Songs and Letters, was written August 3, 2005. The friend referred to is Glen Ragsdale, the artist who did the painting that appears on my book, The Painting of You. You can read a little more about Glen and see his painting here. Not Dying After my friend told me he was diagnosed with cancer and had been given a year and a half […]
Wild Carrots
Seventeen years — hyacinths are there now, shaded by a rapidly growing volunteer cedar. My mother is gone. We live in her house. Wild Carrots It just occurred to me that wild carrots have sprouted only once on the slope near the sidewalk in front of my mother’s house. That was about three years ago. My sons and I noticed them while working in the area. The roots were […]
Tea Time With a Shiny Spoon
Honey? Sun? Meet my old friends, Strawberry and Robin. For it’s tea time with a shiny spoon, and Love and Death will be here soon, Unless they have forgotten. . . . Comes then a knock upon the door, and our hearts, now creaking open . . . [ 755 ]
Blind Fishermen
Early morning. Fresh air, dark clouds, robin-song. And I ask myself — In this paradise, if I am not ready to die, have I ever really lived? March 25, 2020 Blind Fishermen It’s been so long — I think of writing you today. Do you think of writing me? — And do you wonder what to say? So many letters set out this way — Like little rafts at […]
The Curse
In his journal entry for April 4, 1852, Thoreau begins: I have got to the pass with my friend that our words do not pass with each other for what they are worth. We speak in vain; there is none to hear. He finds fault with me that I walk alone, when I pine for want of a companion; that I commit my thoughts to a diary even on my […]
Gandalf
In the parking lot, just as we were setting out on our hike, a young woman said to me, “You look like Gandalf. All you need is the staff.” Her friends all smiled. And when I said, “I’ve heard that before,” they all laughed, and smiled some more. At the falls I thought, How can we not be friends? And the ferns bowed their heads. [ 436 ]
Fare Thee Well Hello — Still Friends
We experience the falling away of friends — not those claimed by death, but by circumstances, of those suffering disappointment in themselves or in us, or both, or some form of private, quietly held anxiety or embarrassment, or of those who have succumbed to weariness, habit, or boredom. Some we have known in the flesh, others through correspondence. And it seems all, whom we thought we understood so well, we […]
Friends
This poem, too, was written about twenty years ago. If I still have the original typescript, it’s in a crate in one of our closets. Sometime after it appeared on my first website, I’m Telling You All I Know, it was noticed by a writer in France, who took it upon herself to translate the poem into French. “Friends” also appeared in a little magazine called The Synergyst. Friends […]
William Michaelian 