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 […]
Do I give enough? There’s equal peril in yes and no. If I remove I from the equation, where does the question go? Is there still an I to know? With the I removed, the giver flows — the giver is a river. The receiver cools his toes. Performance and Pose Performance and pose . . . giving way, finally, to a performance that there is no pose, and […]
A baby’s high chair so high his head’s in the clouds, and, to feed the dear angel, we must climb the nearest mountain through ice and snow with his tiny spoon in our hands — but why do we imagine such things? To explain, I suppose, the ice on our shoes, and the spikes and the ropes. A man’s thoughts so low we must sound the very depths of hell […]
I wonder, is it possible to cultivate a patience so gentle and profound that it outlives the flesh? Or is patience a pond we bathe in, and cannot defile with our death? We were greeted by a friendly, talkative woodpecker yesterday near Goose Lake — a young bird more intent on socializing than carrying on its regular craft and trade. Watching us from a bare trunk not five feet away, […]
In the shade, through the moss, bulbs sprouting by the curb — these too, she says to the sun; and then she shyly, bravely, turns. [ 635 ]
As long as this body is in the world, and as long as it remains lit from within, the urge, the desire, the need, is to tell all — the instinct, the drive, the purpose, the dream. I am my own living and breathing confession, and by this confession, my life is fulfilled. I walked very early this morning on streets shimmering with particles of ice. The sky was almost […]
Expecting snow. Expecting rain. Expecting spring. Expecting soup. Expecting carrots. Expecting beans. Expecting love. Expecting death. Expecting wings. His Own Clock Ticking A human aware of his own clock ticking, I give you the weather — as it relates to my own, which, having just bathed, is moist and warm and promising sun — a day begun precisely so, is all that matters, and must not be ignored. How […]
Who knows why, but this morning I find myself thinking about jackrabbits, vineyards, and dust. These are but a few significant emblems of my childhood, which, rather than ending, gradually became the insanity I labor under today. Polliwogs, crawdads, slow-moving mossy water. The sound of our tractor in the distance, the tractor and my father pursued by a cloud of blackbirds looking for bugs, seeds, and worms. As I look […]
William Michaelian 
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