I thought I had better call my old friend to see how he was doing,
forgetting for the moment he is dead, yet knowing it too,
and knowing I was forgetting, and knowing I knew.
Dream Fragment — January 28, 2019
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Tag Archive for ‘Memory’
Precipice
Approaching the dam, you see the floodgates are open, and that everything below it and before you is bathed in cool mist — the oaks and the brambles, last summer’s grass, the mounds of half-melted granite looking for all the world like a giant’s tears. And you think, what is your own body if not a kind of dam, and what are your eyes if not floodgates? What are your […]
Blessings
I shot a rabbit once, and have been bleeding ever since. I shot a bird, and now my wings are bent. I shot an arrow at the heavens, and my heart is where it went. I shot my childhood, and this strange long life it sent. I shot my life, and death told me what it meant. I shot my death, and now I sing, and now I dance. [ […]
All the World’s Children
Everyone who was there is gone. This rain is their conversation — a gust of night air through the open front door, the bark of the dog, the winter crunch of a shoe in the yard. And far off — can you hear it? — a child is being born. All the World’s Children On the most painful of days, all the world’s children come forth bearing flowers: red […]
The Door Swings In, The Door Swings Out
We had been away from the falls for several weeks. But when we returned to find them recharged by the rain, it was like a meeting of old friends, the kind of gathering one sees in the brick coffeehouses downtown, where tables are pushed together and chairs have coats draped over them like the ferns and moss that cling to the bare maples and line the canyon walls. Mist everywhere. […]
Dream
I love the droughts in writing, the minutes that seem like hours, the deserts and barren fields, the dust bowls, the great depressions, the jalopies abandoned by the road like these hobo wayward notes. I love raindrops that take years to fall and then land acres apart, if they land at all. I love the peace of a dry well, the coyote’s howl, free for the taking. Dream The […]
As I Recall
A few days ago, a red-tailed hawk swooped past the window and landed in the small bare maple opposite the front door. Not a very large bird, it was still too big for its chosen perch. With each move it made, it was poked and brushed by twigs. Finally it braved the maze and dropped to the ground. After investigating the muddy dahlia bed, it flew off across the driveway […]
My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes
Each day, I give thanks for the unknown and unexplained. My Mother Saved Our Baby Shoes My mother saved our baby shoes, two handfuls of wedding rice in delicate nets, flowers, roses, brittle stems, in her cedar chest. And in all her years of not remembering, I wonder which she forgot the best. I wonder which she smiled at when she sat here dreaming in her make-believe and present-tense. […]
Symphonies and Bridges — Two Poems
Another thing I’ve noticed while writing is that when the subject at hand brings something else I’ve written to mind, that something else is far less likely to be a piece from the last two or three years. For whatever reason, my thoughts drift back to older associations, as if the paths that take me there are more familiar and well worn. This could be a sign that my memory […]
Auld Lang Syne
All these years later, I still find sadness, beauty, and hope in this little Bojangles of a poem. While we look back, let us go forth into the world, even if it’s where we’ve been all along. Auld Lang Syne I haven’t been this drunk in a long time, said the poet to his dog who had died years ago. But the story really begins when daylight licks his […]
William Michaelian 