Clouds moving in different directions, the upper layer in wisps from the southwest; fluffs of cotton beneath them, drifting from north to south — and if I were a cloud, the breeze here at ground level would carry me ever so gently from west to east. Somehow — and this is another miracle — there is just enough blue sky to hold this all together. The clouds move, but they […]
Things are exactly as they should be — as they must be — all is simply a matter of natural, inevitable succession, as fluid as a river, with the river’s twists and turns — none are right or wrong, better or worse — the river is acting according to its nature, and is fulfilling itself at its own timeless pace, heedless of the sluices and dams in our thinking. Hold […]
Bare feet on the tile floor — the sensation of cold traveling instantly from soles and toes through limbs and on through the top of the head — or was it something I thought, or lost, or said? This morning’s nigh-full setting moon, illuminating great towering clouds. To be illuminated just so, and blessed to never know. And after even the heaviest of rains, the air remains. Need I look […]
Are You Listening? There are times when the spirit-feeling is so powerful that physical boundaries — gravity, flesh, walls, even death — seem to melt and fade in its presence. And yet this feeling might well be physical itself. But why assume there is a difference at all? Would I do so if I were a giant sequoia, in nightly contact with the stars? Some will say man cannot […]
So old, memory failed, he’d forgotten he was ready for death — one last star at sunrise, just beyond his grasp. Joy! Bookmark, Page 470, Poems, Notes, and Drawings Miracles I sat on a rock in the shade, not far from the water’s edge. Three small boats were out, each carrying but one person. Two were floating with the current. The other, by means of an uneven-sounding outboard motor, […]
The Asylum Poems came into being in 2007 while I was taking care of my mother, who was battling Alzheimer’s Disease. The cycle of twenty short poems comprises the whole of Volume 15 of Songs and Letters, a much larger work begun in 2005 and completed in 2009. The poems were written early in the morning at my mother’s house, in a small bedroom facing the overgrown backyard. Fir trees, […]
William Michaelian 