The weather term wintry mix makes me think of a salad without cucumbers and tomatoes, with carrots and cabbage and kale and lettuce of various curls and crinkles and hues, and perhaps an orange slice or two. On the street, though, with the wind in my face while climbing the hill, I’m not met by tangy vegetables and apple cider vinegar, but with rain and ice and snow. Clumps and […]
And if the sky is a well, and a well is the mind,
then perhaps thirst is the flight of our kind.
Child Flight — September 24, 2015
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It might be said that those who laugh at beginners are afraid to begin themselves. But this fear is also a beginning. It might be said that those who rush to lavish praise on masters of their respective callings and crafts, are not aware that these same masters understand that in the face of so much beauty and immensity they are beginners still, and feel this is natural. It might […]
In the ground a year now, our little apricot tree has seen its share of weather. From its simple beginning as a stick in the mud with a few roots to hold it down, it made good progress during its first summer, and, growing late into the fall, it needed several frosts to persuade it to let go of its yellowed leaves. Then came rain, hail, and snow. It has […]
More rain, more snow, now Goose Lake overflows. The muddy water rushes across the main road that leads deeper into the park. It joins the next lake, which has swollen to the foot of the historic black cottonwood. Where the water broadens, an icy wind appears to move it in the opposite direction. The path is frozen. Between patches of snow, the muddy ground is stiff and easy to walk […]
Canvas 1,230 — February 28, 2019
Winterwood
From the bare lilac,
the hummingbird
eyes the crocus;
that’s what I know.
Poems, Slightly Used, February 23, 2010
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Where pain is unexplained, I liken it to love. I liken it to childhood, too. No? Isn’t it like looking deeply into brown eyes, Into green, into gray, into blue? Where pain is unexplained, I see sweet ripples on the pond. If swimming is to lose, is drowning living on? I think it must be so, where love is true, And pain is unexplained. February 27, after an early-morning walk […]
It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s old, it’s heavy, it’s made of wood. It’s simple, it’s worn, it’s scarred, but it still shines when the light is upon it. She bought it many years ago from a retired school teacher eight miles away in the next town. In the Thirties, before the Second World War, she and one of her girlfriends walked to that town from our town along the railroad […]
Pause — March 5, 2019
Pause
After all is said and done
the wind chime
is still
listening
to the falling snow
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And what of school? I remember our sturdy little desks in rows, bright, flat crayons, and how their taste resembled their smell, jars of glue, the heavy-paper mess, girls with long straight hair and curls, their fragrant dress, the playground, races, marble games and spinning tops, climbing bars and tractor tires stood up in the ground. And, not far off, in a cloud of dragonflies and dust, a country graveyard […]
William Michaelian 