You’re familiar, of course, with the tissue guards that grace the title pages and illustrations in many old books. Like veils on faces and mists in the grove, they protect what is tender and innermost more surely than any fence or wall, or lock and key. If we are to know anything, or anyone, we must understand the connection between hearts and fingertips. Love thrives by its very weightlessness. A […]
I am here and I am not here — what better way to describe this early-morning walk through the fog, accompanied by what seems, and what might very well be, my almost tangible presence after death? The sublime vagueness of it, the feeling that, if it is necessary, it must be in unfathomable ways, the dawning of innocence with the coming of age. I will not tarry. Life is the […]
Is the slug in the grass aware of the bee in the garden? An ambulance roars by and stops at a house up the street. Too late. A hearse pulls away. And why, in the time of crisis, did I feel nothing beyond my apple and persimmon for lunch? Why do I not know when a homeless man nurses his frostbitten feet in front of the mission downtown? Are my […]
The following little story, which reads like a fairy tale — and would be, if every word of it were not true — is an old favorite of mine. Written in 2002 as part of No Time to Cut My Hair, it subsequently appeared in Ararat Quarterly in 2003; in Armenian translation in The Old Language in 2005; and in The Armenian Reporter in 2008. The accompanying image is from […]
How can we know each other if we don’t know ourselves? Between these sweet, holy, terrifying glimpses, how? Into each narrow crevice and wide chasm go the stories we tell. By lip and by eye we fill, by wrinkle and tongue. O dear one, maybe this flower will do, this shout ’cross the pond. This deep love in the dark night of our blind spaces. [ 564 ]
What exists is imagined, and what is imagined exists — our demons and gods, our presents, futures, and pasts, our truths, our errors, our facts. Observation, reason, instinct, fear, madness — these are all of the dance. This is my experience, and so this is my guess. It is the ultimate solitude — there can be none greater than my knowing, and none greater than my not knowing. It is […]
Sunday evening and the house is calm, the voices have returned to the street and their bodies have followed them, their bodies have gone to the stars, gone to the moss on the sidewalks and cushioned retaining walls, to the dogwood leaves on the ground and the soft velvet cedar, padding on dark wild feet with sharp nails exposed to the frost, where the owl shakes down a wealth of […]
The stub of a candle in a rotting old pumpkin — let’s light it one more time — then watch brave autumn cave in on itself — and treasure the rind. Pumpkins I love them best on frozen steps with sunken cheeks and moldy breath, abandoned. I love the rest in muddy fields, bright with age and ripe with next year’s children. I love them riding on a truck, […]
Near the river this morning, we walked through beds of maple leaves six or eight inches deep. The leaves are still bright. And there is a pungency about them, for in the moist atmosphere their undersides are already being consumed by the elements. What sticks to our shoes is paradise to a host of our fellow beings, even as we innocently help hasten their end. And so paradise and tragedy […]
Whatever its origin, I am part of this universe, however it may have been, or may be, scientifically and imaginatively defined. I feel neither significant nor insignificant in the face of this seeming immensity. I am not small. I am not large. I am as much star as I am snail or stone. I do not fear the unknown. I am part of the unknown. I do not believe in […]
William Michaelian 