William Michaelian

Poems, Notes, and Drawings

Tag Archive for ‘Wonder’

A Poetry of Unwritten Laws

If I see life as something imperfect in its design, I guarantee my own unhappiness. If I embrace it as it is, on its own terms, I become a participant in its mystery and wonder. As judge and jury, I will never be able to set things right. The thought that I might make improvements to an arrangement so grand that it effortlessly, even casually, includes an inexhaustible number of […]

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Foolish Questions

On the tracks to the east, a train’s heading north. A long train. North through the fog, beneath a full moon. The moon that kept us up most of the night. Light in the room. Light between the closed blinds. But it’s the silence up there that I wonder about. I can’t help thinking how strong the moon must be. Is that why it’s round? To keep it from being […]

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That Little Bit I Say

And such were the questionsso persistently asked, that children taughtwords to speak at last, and the wordsused their eyes, and heldtheir lips fast. “Such Were the Questions”Recently Banned Literature, August 17, 2014 . That Little Bit I Say That little bit I say before it gives waybeneath its own weight, and the icy wind upon the faceof the statue I’ve become in this gardenof wonder, O dear one,hasten, grace alonecan […]

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Feathers and Dust

When once we see everything is a flower — from wayward child to walnut shell, changing sky to ancient, mottled hand — we understand that no measurement or value can express the shimmering grace of this world. Life is so fine and so rare, it cannot be fathomed by means of comparison, or appreciated on such narrow, limiting terms. Just as there is profound strength in the whole, the individual […]

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My Childhood Self

In terms of imagination, joy, and wonder, I am as much my childhood self as ever. I am a dreamer, and the world passes through me as a dream. That is my reality. There has been an accumulation of facts, of knowledge, yes — but as useful as some of these are, or seem to be, they are only superficial adornments. They are not mine; I lay no claim to […]

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Luxury and Wonder

Trace luxury to its source: a refrigerator is a cool stream or a block of ice; a light bulb is the sun; a book is a troubadour or elder; a car is two bare feet; an oven is fire; food is the earth; a computer is the mind; breath is life. Trace each source to its source: wonder is defined. June 24, 2021 . [ 1144 ]

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Snow Day

The icy granite leaves             * no doubt                         * you wonder                                     * about your consciousness                                     * and how it came to be                         * this eternal             * fragile * thing * with wings             * * January 27, 2021 . [ 1005 ]

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We Are Our Own Lens

In light of the sheer immensity of things, any endeavor, however well executed, is bound to seem trivial and small. We write poems, build bridges, send rockets to the moon; yet within this vast expanse, the page is small, the earth is small, the moon is small, the galaxy is small. How powerful, really, would a universal lens have to be to even show we are here? One partial answer […]

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