Canvas 575 — Grace
a trouble or a scar exactly where you are about to sing “Grace” Recently Banned Literature, October 8, 2016 Canvas 575 July 11, 2015 . [ 1138 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Poetry’
Sunday Morning as Rain Approached
How to describe the complex scent left behind by yesterday’s rain? First the nose asks the toes. Then they all have a good laugh at the brain. June 14, 2021 . Sunday Morning as Rain Approached Sunday morning as rain approached, we walked by the river among snowing cottonwoods. I inhaled a pound of lint. Yesterday I heard a girl I grew up with lost her husband to cancer. I […]
Death Sentence
A poem of a sentence from Emerson’s journal, written 19 June, 1838: A young lady came here whose face was a blur & gave the eye no repose. The story behind it? Gone. Or is it still to be written? Mass shooting. I wonder how old I was when I first heard or read that term. No matter — now it is commonly used in plural form. It was certainly […]
Ambassadors of Silence
If you want to change your life, change your vocabulary. Then, use it only when you must. . Ambassadors of Silence I don’t find words. Words find me. And what do they say? We come as ambassadors of silence. And then they drift away. Hence this white space, and this light space, today. And the wish that you see it that way. Recently Banned Literature, March 4, 2017 . [ […]
That Precious Bit of Nothing
It would be a lie to say the mile I walked barefoot near Goose Lake and the river this morning was completely pain-free. But the little discomfort I felt was well within tolerance, and I enjoyed every step of the way. The only thing my feet haven’t fully adjusted to are the small, sharp rocks the park service has used in a few places to firm or help drain the […]
A Book and Boy
The first verse is a faithful telling of something that happened which my eldest grandson has likely forgotten, and which I had forgotten too, until I rediscovered the poem. The verses that follow are still happening. . A Book and Boy A book and boy in his lap, a farmer tellshis grandson how a big combine cuts the wheat,and loaves of fresh-baked bread come outthe other end. They compare hands. […]
Pas de deux
Coinciding with the arrival of this year’s first hot weather, the grass seed fields are in bloom. The pollen is nigh overwhelming. It’s as if paradise, suddenly aware of herself, has put on too much perfume. She goes to her first dance, where she meets the boy of her dreams. And he’s wearing too much cologne. Everyone in the school cafeteria is sneezing. The band plays on. Later, at home, […]
Service
There is no denying the personal benefits derived from living a quiet, aware, meditative life rooted in gratitude. But such a life is incomplete if it is lived only as a selfish or shortsighted means to that end. Ultimately, awareness must be cultivated for the benefit of all, and of everything there is. However busy one is with work, family, and other involvements, there needs to be in one’s daily […]
June Rain
By holding their leaves upward, the tender young plants in the garden catch even the slightest trace of rain and send it running down their stems and trunks directly to their roots. The cedar, on the other hand, after absorbing what it will, sheds the rest around its perimeter, retaining just enough to show off as jewelry when the sun peeks through the clouds again. Later, as the air warms, […]
Slowly
Your leaves and her hair. Her limbs, your grassy slope to the stream. Your roots. Her sudden rain. Her sunlit path. Your green. And every thing unseen, slowly. Is this what meaning means? Her hair? Your leaves? And all of it so tenderly? Recently Banned Literature, June 11, 2017 . [ 1114 ]
William Michaelian 
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