A winter afternoon spent trying this word and that word and erasing them both, until the room I am in is given to darkness — even death agrees — if not with the method, then at least with the progress. Given Suddenly a ripe plum and how her sweet flesh aches in the mouth in memory of melted snow running down a country road [ 587 ]
Memory’s a sturdy leaf — sycamore, say, or valley oak, placed beneath a sheet of grade school paper fleck’d and grain’d, and a crayon in your hand — rubb’d across its ribs and veins, it surfaces in your chosen color — and all you love begins again — father, mother, supper table, open kitchen window — and somewhere, off in the distance, carry’d nigh by the divine providence of dust […]
Was it the childhood study of bird tracks that first led him to writing, Or the sacred marks his mother made in her crusts and loaves? And then there was the night sky, with its patient verse of constellations. It might have been those. Whatever it meant to be alone . . . He loved it well and tried to write just like them. Then it snowed . . . […]
To say with dying breath, Yes, and write no less. November 23, 2019 [ 580 ]
The private struggles of a writer, his burdens and cares, are like those of anyone. At the same time, he is given a choice: he can write about them, or not write about them. The choice itself is a burden, for one is no more wrong or right than the other; both are right; both are wrong; one is an affront to his fellow humans; the other is an affront […]
There is in November, a December way of looking at things. Cold toes in old shoes. Drunken birds, shrill red berries. Yes . . . This is the place . . . And these are your big round spectacles. The garden door is overgrown. There is rust on the hinges. In the creak of the wind on the spring of the latch is the hand of a ghost. Is it […]
Winter Poems. It’s a slender volume, and its design is somewhat crude. But what does it matter now? Did it matter then? No. It was a joy to behold, and to see in my mother’s hands. Now I find it on her shelf, between Harper Lee and The Grapes of Wrath. Life is like that. So is death. All is good. Nothing blooms by half. So Begins December There’s […]
Two impressions met in the wind; each asked where the other had been; caught in a glance, both said; and passed again. Impressions Year upon year, fall upon fall, the maple leaves on the path remind me of hands. And one must die to know what it is to be held that way — die to the branch, die to the stem, die to the light, die to the […]
Twenty-six degrees. I’m reminded of a similar morning in my mother’s old age, when the furnace stopped working, and how for the entire time during its repair, I chatted with the workman while she stayed in bed to keep warm, snug and unperturbed beneath her grandmother’s quilt, secure in the haze of her thought and non-thought, as if her dementia were a pair of soft comfortable pajamas. Now my wife […]
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 […]
William Michaelian 