Thoreau’s journal, the second of fourteen volumes, done. At age thirty-four, he weighed one hundred twenty-seven pounds. He would venture out on moonlight nights and bathe in ponds. When I closed the book, I found berry juice on my thumbs. [ 506 ]
Of our love, may others say they are moved to poetry. Of our foolishness, may they say they are moved to love. [ 503 ]
Suddenly I notice that scratching my left arm near the elbow makes a cricket-sound. After being a cricket for a minute or two, I’m ready to be human again, albeit differently. Now I wonder if I was human before. And what if this is a sign that I’m becoming a cricket, or that I’ve really been a cricket all along, or that I was, or will be, a cricket in […]
In the grocery store, I met a gentle dog wearing an unnecessary muzzle. We looked into each other’s eyes — ah! and if I may put it so, we exchanged souls. But the one who’d placed the muzzle there looked through me and beyond, like a window in the cold. And through it I saw another chance — I saw it come, and saw it go. [ 500 ]
Cricket in the fern, cricket in the bush —
oh, the lovers who never meet in this world,
turned poets, one by one, like us!
Minstrel
Primitive: Selected Drawings in Pixel, Pencil & Pen, 2010
[ 498 ]
A calendar not marked by dates, but cricket wakes and thunderstorms. A journal of bright Shakespearean colors — and then, in wanders gray and takes the stage. A fallen leaf, written without hand or pen. A leavened moon. A risen when. [ 497 ]
If my age is equivalent to the number of times the earth has traveled around the sun since I was born, how old would I be if I lived on another planet, or in another galaxy, or in another universe altogether? And isn’t this what I already do? The degree to which I resist things as they are — that might be a more accurate rendering of my age. The […]
The strawberries are blooming again. During the past few weeks, with my encouragement and approval, they have sent runners in every direction. Joint by joint, new plants are tacking themselves to whatever bare ground they can find. And where they are growing over rocks, they are rooting in the gaps in between. The secret? Water, along with the understanding that every inch of this wise old earth is a sacred […]
The grapes are ready, two bunches pick’d, and none denied the robin. The hand’s unsteady, the spirit’s quick, the moment’s soon forgotten. August 19, 2019 The Old Language The old man stood near the edge of the road, waiting for his grandson to get home from school. Seeing the bright-yellow bus come in his direction always made his heart glad. Soon the bus would stop in front of the […]
It seemed almost rude last night to close the front door while a cricket was singing just outside. And yet a short while later, ready for sleep, I could still hear it, steady and measured, through the adjacent bedroom window. In less than a minute, I could no longer distinguish my heartbeat and breath from its rhythm and song. And I thought, the first and last word in all human […]
William Michaelian 