Fifty-eight degrees. A light, steady rain. Smoke. A four o’clock run. I don’t care to be in a room full of noisy people. A room full of quiet people, I can appreciate and enjoy. People are at their best when they’re quiet. I can move about among them as I move about among rocks and trees, loving them softly, without needing, seeking, or expecting love in return. But I love […]
No one taught my father to swim. He jumped into the ditch and started paddling. A depression, a lifetime, a war, a family later, he climbed out of the water and waved from the bank on the other side. He waved and he waved, and faded to shade, in the flesh with the fish, a splash and a wish, a breeze, the sky, a door. And then we couldn’t see […]
If you sit alone in a room long enough, and if you do so year after year until you’re so old or so young you don’t know what or who are where you are, you can rest assured of at least one thing: you’ve put in a good day’s work. . A Rose and Other Matters I’m tempted to move the book with the picture of André Malraux on the […]
I didn’t learn to type in school. With the help of a book from the public library, I taught myself when I was in my early thirties. Prior to that, I used the time-honored hunt-and-peck system. I’m a fair typist, not a good one. I can type these lines without looking at the keys. But if I need to incorporate numbers, I have to look down. Once many years ago, […]
There’s a circle around the waning moon, the smallest I’ve ever seen. And isn’t it interesting that upon reading the word circle, one immediately assumes and understands perfection? For a circle that isn’t perfect, isn’t a circle. We might say that something is round, but that word admits the possibility that what we’re referring to might be approximately round, as in the round river stones, which we know are not […]
Our grapes, nearly ripe, were mostly ruined last night by a raccoon. At least two-thirds of the crop was on the ground, along with several leaves, the berries shattered from the bunches and scattered around. We had checked on the vine late yesterday evening and all was well. Then, early this morning, I noticed several places around the house where the animal had dug, the telltale holes being unmistakable. We […]
If this is the letter O,
I can only wonder about the rest of the alphabet,
and what brings on these spells.
The Letter O — August 26, 2019
In a Vast White Space
A little boy, with a little apple and sticky hands,
busy the spirits about him, busy the wind,
many the voices, solemn, joyous,
in a vast white space,
written in plain white words,
a white ball chased by a wide white hound,
an alphabet of snow,
and you, with your funny little arrows,
ink-tipped, turned upon yourself,
in a vast white space, an apple,
turning red.
Recently Banned Literature, June 2, 2014
(written on the nineteenth anniversary of my father’s death)
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William Michaelian 