Having melted the snow above it,
a black stone glistens
in its pit.
All thaws seem abrupt.
Lichens slicked with meltwater
glow a lurid green.
I’m feverish—might I, too,
burn a hole
clear through to spring?
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
Having melted the snow above it,
a black stone glistens
in its pit.
All thaws seem abrupt.
Lichens slicked with meltwater
glow a lurid green.
I’m feverish—might I, too,
burn a hole
clear through to spring?
(Lord’s day). A most tedious, unseasonable, and impertinent sermon, by an Irish Doctor. His text was “Scatter them, O Lord, that delight in war.” Sir Wm. Batten and I very much angry with the parson. And so I to Westminster as soon as I came home to my Lord’s, where I dined with Mr. Shepley and Howe. After dinner (without speaking to my Lord), Mr. Shepley and I into the city, and so I home and took my wife to my uncle Wight’s, and there did sup with them, and so home again and to bed.
Unseasonable light:
war, arson,
a city.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 February 1660/61.
4
For snow, at Christmastime, we thinned
sheets of gauze and cotton to wrap
around arrangements of dry twigs
in oversized vases— We took
our sweaters to don inside the mall
where we could pose for photos
against the chilled slab
of an indoor rink, cutout
backgrounds of iced over
cottages and stenciled sleighs
foreign to our tropical clime.
When I first walked into the bone-
chill of a real winter, new
friends warned: my hair, damp
from the shower, would turn into
a breakable tiara of icicles.
I looked at all the stunned
glittering in the trees, each limb
sheathed as if for a long keeping: as if
the heart keeps best, numbed and on ice.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
Snow doesn’t stop falling
when it hits the ground;
it just slows down for a while.
It’s like that talk-show host
who ridiculed the idea
of a day-time moon—
how I relished his show’s
slow collapse, despite
its glut of glitterati.
stone not water,
water not ice,
ice not coal,
coal not graphite,
graphite not smudge
but locomotive spark.
In response to Via Negativa: Clarity.
To my Lord in the morning, who looked over my accounts and agreed to them. I did also get him to sign a bill (which do make my heart merry) for 60l. to me, in consideration of my work extraordinary at sea this last voyage, which I hope to get paid.
I dined with my Lord and then to the Theatre, where I saw “The Virgin Martyr,” a good but too sober a play for the company. Then home.
Lord, look over my greed.
Make my heart err
for my work,
a martyr to the company.
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 February 1660/61.
The house is pinned
under heavy snow.
My head fills with mucus.
Icy limbs strain
to reach the ground,
alternately melting and freezing.
I drip in the noon-time glare.
Let me be replenished
in nightly increments.
3
The sycamore drops
brittle grenades in the driveway.
Where there were snow
angels in the yard, now
there are sticky fingers
of mud—
But other emissaries
are on the way:
over the harbor,
winds pungent with salt;
the moon’s coppered
edge a sharper argument.
In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.
At the office all the morning, and in the afternoon at making up my accounts for my Lord to-morrow; and that being done I found myself to be clear (as I think) 350l. in the world, besides my goods in my house and all things paid for.
ice all morning
making a clear world
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 February 1660/61.
In all this blankness,
a squirrel finds the precise spot
it buried a nut.
Breaking trail with snowshoes,
I choose to believe
I’m half-floating, not half-sinking.
Clumps of snow sail off the trees,
making a random scatter
of oblong prints.