It really is a walk. Not a race, as many have come to believe. December 18, 2021 . It’s Still a Long Walk to Christmas I’m hidden away from holiday visitors, egg from plates wiped clean, crumbs up from counter brushed with efficient palm, frying pan still warm and slick upon the stove, potato peels filed away, scent of navel orange, morning paper rearranged according to topics best ignored. Outside, […]
It took me sixty-five years to discover the joy of working barefoot in the cold winter-wet yard. All those years in socks and shoes, trying to keep warm — what next will I unlearn? December 15, 2021. Afternoon. . Whispers The old man, they say, has lost his mind. But we do not lose what we give. And it is cold where they wait to be known. It is cold […]
I do not come / I do not go / I do not wait / I do not remain / yet here I am / on my knees again December 12, 2021 . [ 1317 ]
She bends when the wind blows, is still when it’s calm. I stand by the window, an indoor pine. December 10, 2021 . Do You See? Do you see that sapling tested by the wind? And its family and forebears around her, sublime and sturdy as can be? And now, do you see yourself, and the strength, and the beauty, in vulnerability? Recently Banned Literature, February 2, 2017 . [ […]
I remember one, a snowflakeit might have been, turned out to bea child’s hand melting in my own,as winter coaxed the last leafdown. “I Remember One”Recently Banned Literature, December 20, 2013 Canvas 333 December 12, 2013 . [ 1314 ]
this graveyard is full / enough thinking for one life / at the end of fall December 7, 2021 . [ 1311 ]
Each pause a leaf where a comma once has been. Each leaf a pause and then the wind again. December 5, 2021 . [ 1309 ]
Let us say, for the moment, that poetry saves lives. Then, let us imagine a world in which only those who can afford to pay for it, are able to go on living. Meanwhile, old people and young, children and in between, are dying everywhere — all for the want of poetry. Some will shrug and say, That is the way of the world. And others will say, It’s only […]
Life, a familiar echo, a hound on the porch, the sweet pull of smoke; You say I’ve been away, and I dare must believe it; Or how, does your hand, cause the beating, of my heart? “Here Before”Recently Banned Literature, December 4, 2014 Canvas 120 December 8, 2010 . [ 1303 ]
A poem of so many lines going every which way,it becomes a drawing; A drawing of so few lines its breath gives way,to reveal a poem in hiding; A life thought mine sailing away,free of the binds I was tying. “A Poem, a Drawing, a Life”Recently Banned Literature, November 30, 2014 Canvas 479 November 26, 2014 . [ 1302 ]
William Michaelian 