Procession, Highway 22
Through pink clouds of plum flowers And air too cold for bees — even Grief seems pleased To find You — in your white robe — Love — February 26, 2020 [ 677 ]
Tag Archive for ‘Poetry’
The Great Pretender
Time is the ultimate convenience. I don’t know what it is, how it works, or if it even exists. And yet in my precious ignorance, I claim to watch it pass. If I were God, I would laugh — then get up and dance. [ 676 ]
When Morning Comes
A little bit of marble — stout blades of dewy grass — I expect this too — shall pass — to lichen — us. [ 675 ]
The Poem Can See
I cut the grass and it keeps growing, Blade by blade, green and green on green. I cut the dawn. It bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. I cut the man. I kill myself with deeds. I turn to seeds. I sow the grass, I sow the dawn, I sow the man. And they sow me. I sow the poem, blind as blind can be. But the poem can see. The […]
I fill my lungs with air — feel something strange
in there — akin to childhood — a winding stair that clouds
of dream obscure — or an azure tree of stars — fruit ripe
and sure — of one — last — reckoning
February 18, 2020
Canvas 355 — white on black, February 3, 2014
[ 671 ]
Canvas 355 — In the Lane
Warm, the Flesh, Sweet, the Veil
Noted thus far, very lightly in pencil, near the top of the blank page opposite the Index of First Lines, the poems numbered 435, 712, and 730, beginning, respectively, Much Madness is divinest Sense — I could not stop for Death — Defrauded I a Butterfly — all three of which are old favorites of mine — and yet when I encountered them in my slow but steady progress through […]
Canvas 843 — February 15, 2017
Heaven and Hell
A pebble in a child’s pocket, a feather, a shell.
A child in God’s pocket, a star, a well.
God in a pot on a stove.
Soup in a bowl.
Where is heaven, Master? Where is hell?
And the old man smiled.
I too once asked foolish questions, said he,
And brought his spoon to his mouth.
And when we die, and leave this world?
Maybe when we arrive, we will know.
But for now, I beg of you, please, sit down.
This is better warm, than cold.
Recently Banned Literature, February 15, 2018
[ 667 ]
Canvas 843 — Heaven and Hell
Soliloquy
If my past is a fiction, and my present a dream, my future could be anything. If my past is a dream, and my present its awakening, the future has much to explain — And that much must be little, if it means what it seems. Such is the play. Such is the scene. To write is to be written. To speak is to sing. Where the mind fails, I […]
Tree People
The intimacy of the charcoal-green outlines of trees near dawn — grayer at a distance, greener in their fairy tale approach — these sisters and brothers, the dark redwoods and bare oaks, the wise owls of one’s thought. Lights on over breakfast tables. Still wind chimes, wondering which clothes to put on. I shall wear a sparrow. And another, The mist is enough. February 13, 2020 [ 665 ]
Lincoln Memorial
Afternoon sunlight on Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, following a long foggy prelude. In it, the rising snowflakes are small moths. Earlier, juncos were splashing in the mossy-leafy rainwater collected in the birdbath. Most birds, I have found, do not like a clean tub. A scrub-jay just arrived, bright-blue against its bare perch in the fig tree. The shepherd’s purse is starting to bloom. The front sidewalk and retaining wall are deep […]
William Michaelian 