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 […]
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 ]
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 ]
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, […]
The art of making it rain, I learned from my father. That I am here to explain, I learned from my mother. July Rain Dying is such old work — I settle the dust in our yard with a hose. Poems, Slightly Used, July 5, 2009 [ 423 ]
First light and fine lace — our love is a maple, my dear. Sky-Song and Maple Sky-song and maple, so-goes the riddle, summer-lap and old-toes, soft-breast and all-she-knows, you in the middle, light-glows, water-flows, night-long the bell-tolls, the dew-rose, the cradle. Recently Banned Literature, June 19, 2014 [ 422 ]
O dear one, it is not religion that saves us, or meditation, or philosophy, or work, or art, but love operating through these things, and our inevitable surrender to her benevolent force, if not in this life, then in the next, which is this very moment, of course. “It Is Not Religion” Recently Banned Literature, March 12, 2017 Splash Above a meadow of moss . . . a towhee […]
Up in time to find a dove confessing to a weightless sliver moon. “First Impression” Poems, Slightly Used, July 20, 2009 Ask Me How Or Why Ask me how or why, I simply do not know. There is no purpose, only setting out. No work as precious notion. Or play that means escape. Prayer, perhaps? In the sense that love’s an ocean. And everything is yes. That the pieces […]
Year by year, the neighbor’s irises have crept like a floral glacier across the narrow path I maintain between his yard and our garden. This spring, they were so heavy with blooms, I had to prop them up to keep them from smothering our young tomato plants. It was a beautiful sight — so beautiful that sometime in July, if I am still living, I will dig and divide those […]
William Michaelian 