Canvas 511
Can one impose when moved by love to speak?And if one loves, can he be imposed upon? Canvas 511 January 12, 2015 . [ 1347 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Love’
Canvas 1,130 — Two Children Playing
January 10, 1976. Forty-six years.Back then, my father’s mother referred to us as “two children playing.”She was seventy-five at the time. She’s still right. January 10, 2022 Canvas 1,130 January 10, 2018 . [ 1346 ]
A Flower for Marian
Today is the birthday of my father’s little sister, Marian. It is also the anniversary of my grandfather’s death in 1990 and the day the ancient orthodox Armenian Church observes Christmas — except in Jerusalem, where the Brotherhood at the Monastery of St. James follows an older calendar and Christmas falls on a later date. In the dimly lit, incense-laden sanctuary of St. James itself, there is a nook where […]
The Earth Says Hello
There were high winds and heavy rain throughout the night. Now that it’s light, I see several more fir branches are down. Most are about six to eight feet in length; the longest, with its thick end leaning against the fig tree, is about twelve feet, and two inches in diameter. And so nature’s cleanup of last year’s ice storm continues. Later I’ll go out and have a look at […]
Not You
Is this really a certain day, of a certain month, in a certain year? Perhaps, if that is what one believes. And yet, it has been shown that one can, and will, believe anything — for instance, that peace and joy are a destination that can be arrived at through the intellect, when it is clear that those who choose to do battle on those grounds wear themselves out searching, […]
Early-Morning Streetlight
James Baldwin: Collected Essays, in the fifteenth printing of the Library of America edition — a gift for Christmas from “The Kids.” At one-thirty in the morning, the sound of a raccoon climbing the fence near our bedroom window. Into the kitchen for a sip of water, the cold floor a comfort to my warm bare feet. Streetlights and a dusting of snow. December 26, 2021 . Early-Morning Streetlight For […]
That Little Bit I Say
And such were the questionsso persistently asked, that children taughtwords to speak at last, and the wordsused their eyes, and heldtheir lips fast. “Such Were the Questions”Recently Banned Literature, August 17, 2014 . That Little Bit I Say That little bit I say before it gives waybeneath its own weight, and the icy wind upon the faceof the statue I’ve become in this gardenof wonder, O dear one,hasten, grace alonecan […]
Nothing Like Love
I first clicked “like” in 2010. I have no idea how many times I have clicked it since then, but it surely numbers in the thousands. When we lived on the farm, I clicked “like” in another way — with a pair of sturdy wooden-handled pruning shears. I clicked my way through the damp, foggy winters, up and down rows of vines and trees. Those clicks may well have numbered […]
Whispers
It took me sixty-five years to discover the joy of working barefoot in the cold winter-wet yard. All those years in socks and shoes, trying to keep warm — what next will I unlearn? December 15, 2021. Afternoon. . Whispers The old man, they say, has lost his mind. But we do not lose what we give. And it is cold where they wait to be known. It is cold […]
Canvas 120 — Here Before
Life, a familiar echo, a hound on the porch, the sweet pull of smoke; You say I’ve been away, and I dare must believe it; Or how, does your hand, cause the beating, of my heart? “Here Before”Recently Banned Literature, December 4, 2014 Canvas 120 December 8, 2010 . [ 1303 ]
William Michaelian 