The towhees around our house are quite friendly. Not only do they not avoid me, some seem downright eager for conversation. Within just a few feet, they stop and look at me, then hop about in the ferns and moss and rhododendrons without wariness or alarm. Late in the afternoon two days ago, while I was watering the hostas not far from the birdbath, a male with beautiful markings alternated […]
The art of making it rain, I learned from my father. That I am here to explain, I learned from my mother. July Rain Dying is such old work — I settle the dust in our yard with a hose. Poems, Slightly Used, July 5, 2009 [ 423 ]
First light and fine lace — our love is a maple, my dear. Sky-Song and Maple Sky-song and maple, so-goes the riddle, summer-lap and old-toes, soft-breast and all-she-knows, you in the middle, light-glows, water-flows, night-long the bell-tolls, the dew-rose, the cradle. Recently Banned Literature, June 19, 2014 [ 422 ]
The grapes are in bloom. And everything else a child knows, but cannot tell. June 13, 2019 A Little Less Certainty My philosophy? a little less certainty — yes, like a kiss that might never be, so sweet to savor, you see, once in the way and the sway of it, the light and the day and the play of it. Even alone, had you and I known the […]
O dear one, it is not religion that saves us, or meditation, or philosophy, or work, or art, but love operating through these things, and our inevitable surrender to her benevolent force, if not in this life, then in the next, which is this very moment, of course. “It Is Not Religion” Recently Banned Literature, March 12, 2017 Splash Above a meadow of moss . . . a towhee […]
Some are flowers, bleeding at the stems.
Some are frost on windowpanes.
Some are haunted, some reserved.
A westbound bus on a sun-blind curve.
Some look back when you least expect it.
A lightning flash. A winding path.
A baby bird.
Canvas 367 — March 4, 2014
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To me, one strange thing about living is having a name. Another is so many not thinking it strange. First Came the Meanings First came the meanings then their names chamomile squirrel supper table the boy himself a pebble down a well loving the hand that let him go Recently Banned Literature, May 10, 2013 [ 416 ]
As much as by touching, reading, and simply having them near, I think any poet would gain by the calm, deliberate practice of describing the scent of old books. To describe, in essence, what can’t be described, and yet must — this is his domain and his charge; to illuminate what is haunting, yet painfully familiar — this is why she was born; and then, when she dies, to haunt […]
Up in time to find a dove confessing to a weightless sliver moon. “First Impression” Poems, Slightly Used, July 20, 2009 Ask Me How Or Why Ask me how or why, I simply do not know. There is no purpose, only setting out. No work as precious notion. Or play that means escape. Prayer, perhaps? In the sense that love’s an ocean. And everything is yes. That the pieces […]
Year by year, the neighbor’s irises have crept like a floral glacier across the narrow path I maintain between his yard and our garden. This spring, they were so heavy with blooms, I had to prop them up to keep them from smothering our young tomato plants. It was a beautiful sight — so beautiful that sometime in July, if I am still living, I will dig and divide those […]
William Michaelian 
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