A wild, windy morning. Rain and fir cones pelt the house. The stove light flickers — once, twice, three times; four. Candle and matches on the counter, just in case. Then the wind stops and everything is quiet, As if a grand, cosmic decision has been made. To open palms, to sit up straight, and blow away. ~ [ 2039 ]
Very well, then — if I am an underground man, the least I can do is be frank and open about it. Seven years after writing Window Thoughts, I find myself much changed on the surface: less hair, grayer hair, a longer, grayer beard, and more wrinkles, especially on my age-spotted forehead, with a deepening crease plunging downward towards my nose past my left eyebrow. At the same time, I […]
Little boy in prayer, I see you playing there. Aye, to pray is to play — what else can I say? . Every night, I sleep on the floor at Grandma’s house. . Dear seagull in the wind, I’m a fish without a fin. . Autumn leaf — a child’s flag in the cold. . The Rambler, Numb. 20. Saturday, May 26, 1750. On affectation and hypocrisy. Such pageantry be […]
Like some others recently installed in the neighborhood, the new streetlight near Don and Jane’s house doesn’t have a plastic enclosure for the bulb. And this morning I noticed a spider has built a web across one of the four exposed sides. Beaded with moisture from the fog, it was beautifully illuminated. The spider could have chosen any bush or tree growing nearby. Instead, it climbed the smooth, silver pole […]
This fall, like the last, the pine is losing a large amount of its needles. Yet it remains green at the top and at the tips. It’s a gradual process; the needles turn yellow before they drop. This might well be some ordinary housekeeping, because the tree looked good all summer. I think I recall reading somewhere that pines hang onto their new needles for three or more years. Maybe […]
How does a child learn to lie? It’s in the air, it’s in your eye. Word-drift. Intonation. Body language. Sigh. And when, a short time later, is disbelieved, is brought to deceive, little by little, by and by. . We were on a first-name basis. Now we just smile and nod when the wind blows. . Read the thirty-seventh chapter of Middlemarch. Moved daffodils from the plastic pot they’d bloomed […]
Apple days, orange nights, persimmons on the wind. Melon rinds, summer sighs, I’ll not be back again. . [ 1849 ]
Here are the flowers. Where are the bees? Here are the trees. Where are the leaves? Here are the people. Smoke on the breeze. . [ 1783 ]
A breeze passing through cottonwoods sounds like rushing water, but rushing water doesn’t sound like a breeze passing through cottonwoods; rushing water sounds like rushing water, rushing water rushing water rushing rushing water . [ 1774 ]
William Michaelian 