The sky, a tree, a rose, a fish, a flower — but what holds it all together? If I say love, will you smile? — You, a woven galaxy of nerves? You, with your suppleness and warmth, and the science of your eyes? Never mind what the Greeks said, or Darwin, or Shakespeare. Open wide your gates. Shed your raiment. Put down your shield. Behold our trembling flesh. Is it […]
Said moss to stone feeling wise one day, Hurry brings us closer to our final, fatal end. And stone replied, Dumb as I am, I agree, my friend, just as daylight died. And just as daylight died, The rain began. [ 650 ]
For every heart-breaker, there is a love-maker; for every flower, an hour — a death, a life. Death Treads Softly Death treads softly past the nurse reading at her desk. When morning comes, another bed is empty. Winter is long, the old folks let go one by one. We strip their sheets and scrub the floors, send their bundles to the laundry. But the ones who live are hungry. […]
The star forgets my name — the crocus just the same — But one thing they remember — or so it sometimes seems — To shine and bloom again — to bloom and shine — As if I were here — almost — and only meant to sing — [ 648 ]
“It’s foolish to walk in the rain,” they say, and I come in dripping just to tell them, “It’s foolish to wait for spring.” [ 647 ]
This afternoon I finished reading the third volume of Thoreau’s journal — the third of fourteen, as published in 1906 by Houghton Mifflin and Company. And I am set to begin The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, after reading the introduction for the fourth or fifth time early this morning. As with Whitman, I continue my habit of reading aloud — except in the case of The Letters of Henry […]
Beautiful old-fashioned valentines. There’s a box of them here in my mother’s desk that she kept from her grammar school days. Delicate, simple, intricate, ornate, all with familiar names. Off to the library, now, to high school, to marriage, to war. Home again, home again. To clothesline. To family. To a walk through the park. And what have we here? Someone’s initials, in the heart of the sycamore? “Old-Fashioned Valentines” […]
In the form of his complete poetry and prose, Walt Whitman has been a daily companion of mine for the last three months. Today I opened and closed the uncommon-common book of his life for the last time — but not, if I am granted the necessary health and a similar span of years, for ever or for all time. Clearly, there is much about our time that would not […]
Do I know you as well as I know those I know in the flesh? Yes. Because in both ways of knowing, it’s really my imagination that creates you. Is this a way of saying I don’t know you at all, or that I know you ever so little? Yes. And that, too, is beautiful. Do you know me? Is that something I can ever know? I don’t know. Do […]
There are three sides to a coin — heads, tails, and its round enduring edge. There is its smell, there is its taste, there is its weight, there is its heft. There is its tactile depth — its diametric likeness to a map. There is its real, temporary, imagined worth — the things it represents. There is my hand. There is my pocket. There is my life. There is my […]
William Michaelian 