Yesterday at the falls, the forest atmosphere was so complex, there was no way to know just how many individual scents had gone to make up the magical one we were breathing — the myriad births, lives, and deaths, the microscopic miracles wrought by sun, shade, light, and water. In the first moment, we were transformed; and, with the ripe fall earth deep in our lungs and warm in our […]
When a young man rhymes, we smile and nod. When old, he is forgiven. When in between, we shake our heads, and think we understand him. Or do we just pretend? Fool that I am, I can never tell. But I wish him well. I wish him well. For that is love, and this is heaven. Honeysuckle and Lemon Paneled wall in oaken hue, piano in corner near wood […]
All my words are broken. The pieces are bright-colored leaves. My limbs are bare. Love falls through me. And the wind in your hair is what meaning means. [ 542 ]
There was one leaf which seemed to know the best, and so taught falling to the rest. And love’s been naked ever since. Love’s been naked, and that is all we need confess. October 14, 2019 I Could Fall for You I could fall for you, like the first leaf, before falling is fashionable, when everyone else is still clinging and green and oblivious to change. I could fall […]
Frost. Yesterday at about eight in the evening, the Big Dipper was sitting almost flat on a stove in the north, and was being warmed by shadowy treetop flames. This morning at six it was leaning against the wall to the right of the stove, balancing on its handle. By its position, one could tell that the kitchen has a high ceiling, and that the next room is several light […]
We live in a world inhabited by giant sequoias thousands of years old. This is true wealth. If I had not grown up near them, visited them, gazed upon them, put my hands on them, and taken their very breath deep into my lungs, I would not be this person; I would be someone else. Yes, we can, and should, say this of all living things, great or small. We […]
The weather turns cold, and here I am with my books again — the book of fallen leaves, and of the cloudless night and bright moon — the book of wordless days, and of the failing light in my work room — and glad I am, love, you will be home soon. October 9, 2019 A Warm Muffin and a Fresh Ripe Orange Imagine loving silence and solitude so […]
A family photograph in which I look like a lost soul, or perhaps a soul that just happens to be visiting a familiar body, as the eye scans a ledger with all its columns filled but one or two, or a star a lonely field, while those around me smile, sure of themselves. It’s October, love. Now tell me how you feel. Like you. You know I do. That’s why […]
If I had not known desperation, could I now know calm? What does the house feel, when it’s pelted with cones? If I had not known fear, could I now know love? What does the house dream, when the sun warms its bones? dahlias in the rain bowed heads weak stems she brings them in [ 519 ]
In 1851, in a journal entry written in late-September, Thoreau writes in its own separate paragraph the following sentence: The poet writes the history of his body. This statement, or observation, occurs seemingly out of the blue, between references to the growth pattern of pine trees and the tendency of a certain kind of grass to burn slowly and steadily without flame. In Part 2 of Clarel, his 18,000-line poem […]
William Michaelian 