Is it possible to read about, or listen to, the experiences of others, without filtering them through, or comparing them to, one’s own? I don’t suggest that an unbiased comparison would be of lesser or no value. In essence, that asks the same, or nearly the same, question: Is it possible to consider one’s own experiences non-judgmentally, as other than a series of successes and failures, or a source of […]
Destroyers advertise themselves. They break down one’s door to get in. Makers must be found. They reveal themselves to seekers. Fortunate are they who go forth freely each morning, with no stone to drag, or that they must first roll away from their gloomy sepulcher. Fortunate are they who have a stone, and who know they have a stone. You have given it great thought. Do you now see that […]
Such a lovely dragonfly . . . ah, very well, I was too near after all — too near, too long . . . but what are time and space in the garden? and this newly planted cedar stake . . . the bleeding wound it makes . . . and the ground, which still remembers how to heal . . . [ 794 ]
Some of us see ourselves as damaged goods, and wear that image as a badge, or a kind of shield against the world. And even in this stage, we are beautiful. But we are beautiful in every stage; for instance, we are beautiful when we foolishly think we are above all that, and that we are the only ones who know. We are beautiful when we think ourselves insignificant and […]
You’re waiting in the wings for your turn to go on. You pull back the curtain. The stage is dark. The audience is gone. The time has come. You say your first line. Light is a poem. And somewhere, somehow, someone hears you. June 25, 2020 [ 790 ]
Let’s just say these sprouted here, and that we decided to let them grow. Let’s say the rain came, and that our hoes and shovels broke. Let’s say we are weeds ourselves. Yes, and before we die, let us recognize the truth. Weeds I love the weeds growing around my door, Familiar, independent, working without pay. They would be on a hillside if they could, And someday will be […]
If I were to walk two hours in the heat, carrying my canvases through wild blackberries into the heart of the grass seed fields, and spend the day painting while hunger gnaws at my bones, and then come home exhausted with no means for my bills, and if you found me here, sitting on my only chair, ministered by angels and haunted by ghosts, what would you say to me? […]
I know someone who has a beautiful garden, with a barn, a path, many squirrels, and a broom. In the garden, she moves rocks around. And the rocks respond: they summon light and shade, night, rain, snow; and they hold each beyond the winking lives of them. I do the same with small smooth river stones. Today, near our jade plants, at the east end of the flowerbed by the […]
Thoughtful smudges done before, after, and at the same time as each other; they might be friends; they might be brothers; they might be locks or keys or mirrors; I see clouds through years. [ 783 ]
Rain, enough to thrill the garden, but not to silence the scent of the grass seed fields. The delicate maples, red and green. The same towhee, in the same tree, sure each sentence must end differently. Flicker with an earth-brown beak, probing, searching, finding, swallowing. Little boy with a wet new bike, testing its frame against the curb, feeling the vibration in his bones. Funny how some words end up […]
William Michaelian 