And if this is a death bed edition, how is it that the bed is piled high with papers and books, leaving no room for the body? And how is it that, when I hold up my hand, it seems less flesh than daylight? Death and the Scribe Old though he was, Death hadn’t the heart to take him, The diligent, muttering scribe. Already, the world had forgotten him, […]
A long, dry fall. Almost November, and we still have dahlias. Cool, smoky, misty mornings. Spiders asleep in their chosen colors. The other hand clapping. Want less, want not, want nothing at all. Dahlias Sunday evening after the flower show I dream of two dead uncles. Penny Thoughts and Photographs, September 1, 2009 [ 166 ]
Pizzicato
What larger thing
in a smaller space
than that which
proclaims
the heart
Poems, Slightly Used, May 9, 2009
Canvas 1,139 — January 18, 2018
[ 165 ]
I’ve lived in Oregon for more than half of my sixty-two years, yet rare is the day I don’t think about the place of my birth. And there are numerous dreams. Back in 2014, this one became a poem. And yes, there really were nights like this. As Any Thing That Is Another night in the old hometown. The streets we used to roam. The lights are out. There […]
When we remember a place, do we imagine it so clearly that if someone is there now, they will sense our presence, or in some other way be enlightened, moved, or disturbed? And do we know, similarly, that what moves us, isn’t caused by the thoughts or dreams of someone else, someone departed, perhaps, or among the living still? An Orange Question I wonder — has the owner of […]
Eventually I’ll run out of material worth saving. It might be a few weeks or months from now, a year or two or ten — I really don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that I’m going about this project in such a random manner. I write as the spirit moves me, and when that spirit reminds me of something else I’ve written, I dig it up, and […]
The poems offered here are from my book of sixty-four short poems, Another Song I Know, published by Cosmopsis Books in 2007. The translations and transliterations are the generous, fine work of poet and friend, Vassilis Zambaras, author of numerous poems, as well as Sentences, Aural, Triptych, and other collections. Vassilis and I met online in the blog world in 2008. Within days, I felt we’d known each other for years […]
Faulty grammar aside, there’s more here than meets the I. But Emily Dickinson? What made me think of her? For Emily If the past is a flower, and has its seasons and dies, what of the seeds it leaves behind? and what of you, and I, dear butterfly? [ 159 ]
There’s magic in the old downtown district — the brick buildings and coffeehouses, the quaint shops and reading rooms, the moss-lined alleys, upstairs dwellings, dance schools, modeling schools, empty rooms full of derelict adding machines and typewriters, kicking through fallen leaves, inhaling the smoke of unseen cigarettes, the past, present, and future a grand composite, each patiently describing the other, self-effacing, a curious blend, the voiceless cough of a homeless […]
Sometimes, if it’s read slowly enough and with love, even a poem that’s deeply flawed, such as this one, seems not so flawed after all. And when we think of people as poems, and approach them in the same way, it’s positively medicinal. One Sunday in October Just enough rain to sprout mushrooms, then wave upon wave of mold. Un cuervo, mi mente, un matorral. How a boy in […]
William Michaelian 