From the tips of its branches to the deepest, outermost extent of its roots, the cedar that planted itself within a few feet of our front window is as wild as a tree growing in an inaccessible canyon. This is something the sky knows and is always eager to tell. Nor is this truth questioned by squirrels, birds, insects, and worms, all of which are wild and wise in their […]
To my mind, John Muir is a poet of the wilderness in the most divine literary sense — his praise and gratitude for the natural world is a song as sublime, inspirational, and wise as any sung by Homer or Whitman; in his hands, a journal entry seems the work of angels, here to recall man from the nightmare of his blind, narrow self. Muir is explorer, artist, scientist, dreamer, […]
Back to the falls — but not the same falls, no; never have we seen the water rushing so madly; never have we heard it thundering so loudly on the rocks below; the creek in torrent, fed by laughing streams dancing across the path on one side, and spilling over ferns, moss, rocks, and downed branches on the other; a dusting of snow all around; the temperature about thirty-five degrees; […]
Thoreau, off on a tramp, writing by moonlight. Whitman, bending a sapling to test his paralyzed strength. Bathing in ponds. Crow-voices. Wild flowers. Bumblebees. The nighttime parade of stars. The names of ferry-boat captains. Snow to the waist. Ice-cakes in the river. Big families. Poetry. Geology. Boot laces. Wild carrots. The end of the war. My hand on the knob. Your knock on the door. [ 606 ]
A winter afternoon spent trying this word and that word and erasing them both, until the room I am in is given to darkness — even death agrees — if not with the method, then at least with the progress. Given Suddenly a ripe plum and how her sweet flesh aches in the mouth in memory of melted snow running down a country road [ 587 ]
Was it the childhood study of bird tracks that first led him to writing, Or the sacred marks his mother made in her crusts and loaves? And then there was the night sky, with its patient verse of constellations. It might have been those. Whatever it meant to be alone . . . He loved it well and tried to write just like them. Then it snowed . . . […]
Writing poetry all night. Some call it dream. Some call it sleep. In the morning the paper is blank. Snow has covered the ink. The graves. The hollow reeds. The bird tracks. Then you wake. Wolves I sweep the floor, but not beneath your feet. Your brow defends the shadow fallen there. Frail sun leaves ice unscathed and windows cold. Another winter just begun, bolder than the last. Remembered […]
I woke up thinking of something white — bones, or maybe snow — whites of varying hues. A bone in the snow would stand out. Like a drop of soup on Sunday School clothes. There was the sense, too, of having traveled a great distance — of having been an old man on a narrow high-mountain road, with but an apple and notebook to sustain me. And the notebook was […]
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 […]
Pause — March 5, 2019
Pause
After all is said and done
the wind chime
is still
listening
to the falling snow
[ 299 ]
William Michaelian 