William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Poetry’

Light Cannot Pass

Power is restored — electricity has blown out the neighbor’s sweet wax candles. February 22, 2021 . Light Cannot Pass Light cannot pass between two hands clasped in prayer but it does wash over them and it runs down the arms and it drips from the elbows and it melts like wax on the floor. Songs and Letters, May 18, 2008 . [ 1029 ]

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It’s All Local

What holds this grand Cosmos in place? Laws, some will say, or, Gravity; others, Grace — while I imagine the kind face of a fiddler, caught up in his tune, holding you. February 19, 2021 . It’s All Local It’s all local — every concern, every accomplishment, every assault upon the earth and its inhabitants. The earth itself is a living, breathing inhabitant of something, if perhaps larger, every bit […]

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Glass to Green

Street by street, power is being restored. Last night at nine o’clock, it was thirty-five degrees. This morning at three-thirty, it was forty-five. Yesterday morning, we viewed the destruction around town. The ice storm has closed roads, brought down wires, felled mighty oaks, split cedars, ravaged birches, and crushed cars and rooftops with mossy limbs. In the afternoon, the roar of chainsaws filled the air. They will be running for […]

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Hyacinths and Biscuits

Of the many wonderful things written and said by Carl Sandburg, there is one that often springs to mind which never goes out of fashion: Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits. Starlings are sunshine birds. They know how the light plays on their feathers. A layer of snow and ice: first at the feeder this morning were the juncos. A walk before sunrise, every step accompanied by a […]

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If I Have Time

Evil, it seems to me, is an acute form of ignorance. If I have time to be angry, then I must also have time to love. And if I love, I have no time to be angry. And time itself is an illusion. Will these words reach you before we are gone? Will they reach anyone? What can that matter, if we love? Recently Banned Literature, February 21, 2018 . […]

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Revival

Sometimes, as I sit here writing in the dark, I feel as if my hands belong to someone else working just beyond the veil — a parallel realm in which objects roam free of any given meaning, and the sound of a passing train — I hear it now — is that someone’s remembered childhood. “Arrival” Poems, Slightly Used, February 18, 2010 . Revival . . . and now / […]

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