Canvas 1,244 — November 27, 2019
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Tag Archive for ‘Winter’
The Gathering
Out from a room heavy with light and oppressive with talk and laughter, into the sweet chocolate night, the wood smoke, and fog — and no one knows me when I return; but my body is familiar to them, my hat and my hair — they recognize my clothes and are satisfied. Maybe that’s all I was to them before? A ghost, a mirror, nothing more? [ 582 ]
Cold Notes
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 […]
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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Canvas 1,230 — Winterwood
First Kiss
This has been a winter of books, and the kind of simple earthly pleasures that are priceless and free — a winter of clouds and ice and sun, of forest paths and waterfalls, of vanilla pages and chamomile grass and moss — a winter of Blake, Thoreau, and Don Quixote, of diaries and letters, and of all that lasts beyond its past and lights the present tense. And it’s not […]
Day of the Dead
Twenty-six-degrees, and a walk through the frozen neighborhood before sunrise — an exhilarating way to start the day. I was careful, of course, to pick up my feet, ice being what it is, and bones being what they are. On the snowy parts, where cars had not been, the crunch of my footsteps was loud enough to wake the dead, if they were not awake already. Day of the […]
Inheritance — February 8, 2019
Inheritance
Every winter,
we pruned
the same
long
rows
of vines.
Now we’re older;
some of us have died.
I see the vineyard in my mind:
the brush is tangled, leafless, waiting.
Songs and Letters, February 4, 2007
Winter Poems, Cosmopsis Books, 2007
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Inheritance
Robin Thoughts
Why did the robin take a vigorous bath yesterday, on a thirty-five-degree winter afternoon? Did he do it to spite the incoming snow? And where is he now? Near the ice-rimmed pool, watching the white-bright world from under the rhododendron, warm to his red in its bed of dry leaves? At two this morning, I was awakened by snow-light. Out walking before seven, I saw a boy in front of […]
Canvas 837 — Winter Comes, Winter Goes
Tracks made by a bird. The kind was hard to tell. And then it snowed. Soft and white it fell. He died that day. They say he never wrote so well. [ 279 ]
All the World’s Children
Everyone who was there is gone. This rain is their conversation — a gust of night air through the open front door, the bark of the dog, the winter crunch of a shoe in the yard. And far off — can you hear it? — a child is being born. All the World’s Children On the most painful of days, all the world’s children come forth bearing flowers: red […]
William Michaelian 