White space

Sam Pepys and me

Up early; and after reading a little in Cicero, I made me ready and to my office, where all the morning very busy. At noon Mr. Creed came to me about business, and he and I walked as far as Lincoln’s Inn Fields together. After a turn or two in the walks we parted, and I to my Lord Crew’s and dined with him; where I hear the courage of Sir H. Vane at his death is talked on every where as a miracle.
Thence to Somerset House to Sir J. Winter’s chamber by appointment, and met Mr. Pett, where he and I read over his last contract with the King for the Forest of Dean, whereof I took notes because of this new one that he is now in making. That done he and I walked to Lilly’s, the painter’s, where we saw among other rare things, the Duchess of York, her whole body, sitting instate in a chair, in white sattin, and another of the King, that is not finished; most rare things. I did give the fellow something that showed them us, and promised to come some other time, and he would show me Lady Castlemaine’s, which I could not then see, it being locked up! Thence to Wright’s, the painter’s: but, Lord! the difference that is between their two works. Thence to the Temple, and there spoke with my cozen Roger, who gives me little hopes in the business between my Uncle Tom and us. So Mr. Pett (who staid at his son’s chamber) and I by coach to the old Exchange, and there parted, and I home and at the office till night. My windows at my office are made clean to-day and a casement in my closet. So home, and after some merry discourse in the kitchen with my wife and maids as I now-a-days often do, I being well pleased with both my maids, to bed.

as far to death
as a winter forest

the painter’s whole body
in white paint

between two windows
my office days


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 18 June 1662.

Portrait, with Pink Baseball and Competitive Skateboarder

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
Glove or no glove, it fits
roundly, beautifully pink
and unscratched in my hand.
I bought it at Logan Airport
years ago, returning from a trip
during which I read some poems
in a couple of college writing
classrooms. But not once has anyone
ever thrown it across a yard or grassy
field flecked with dandelions in early
summer, toward an eager child ready
with a mitt still a little too large
for her hand. Not once has it splintered
an upstairs window to a chorus of shouts.
Perhaps it simply went the way most things
meant to serve as reminder or memento go—
on a shelf, then in a box with the stuffed
bunny and baby shoes; then shuffled from
move to move until it resurfaces. So I admire
the sixty-five year old woman, a competitive
slalom skateboarder whose well-used skateboard
and team bag are displayed in a Skate Museum.
She says sometimes she screams as she loops
through giant slalom courses because she's
scared and happy at the same time. When I
hear a loud bang from somewhere down
the road, I guess it could either be
gunfire, or a car backfiring.

Meridian

Sam Pepys and me

Up, and Mr. Mayland comes to me and borrowed 30s. of me to be paid again out of the money coming to him in the James and Charles for his late voyage. So to the office, where all the morning. So home to dinner, my wife not being well, but however dined with me.
So to the office, and at Sir W. Batten’s, where we all met by chance and talked, and they drank wine; but I forebore all their healths. Sir John Minnes, I perceive, is most excellent company. So home and to bed betimes by daylight.

upland voyage
the well we all bore
into daylight


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 17 June 1662.

Pot Life

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
Before the finish, the priming
of surfaces. The lag in time
aimed at maximum dryness for effective
bonding. And yet everything is pocked with
flaws from the beginning, rich with
the pigments of unevenness. Humidity
in the air, the sill stippled with pinprick
drops. We desire smooth sheets,
a glass of cool liquid. The window
cracked open to a breeze. However, whatever,
here, now— despite what we know
of water or fire, rusted bridges,
every event of astounding collapse.

Fallingwater under reconstruction

Note to folks arriving here from a web search: This was essentially a post that got too long for Instagram. I was not able to spend hours researching everything my age-addled memory suggested ought to be the case. You should probably take it all with a grain of salt.

Thanks to my brother Mark making all the arrangements and doing all the driving, we made it to Fallingwater on Sunday for one of the early, in-depth tours, which I can’t recommend enough. Each tour guide, while following the general plan outlined by Edgar Kauffman Jr., is encouraged to focus on areas of their personal expertise, and we got a retired NYC designer who grew up in Johnstown for a cosmopolitan yet regionally attuned perspective.

They’re finally replacing the original concrete with a more robust, water-resistant composition that will mimic the original as closely as possible, a process expected to take two more years, I think the guide said. Although Frank Lloyd Wright was thoroughly influenced by Japanese aesthetics, he lacked the centuries of craft knowledge that informs traditional Japanese construction, concrete still being a fairly new material in 1936 (or newly revived – the Romans used concrete extensively, and it has lasted, but engineers have only recently learned the secrets of its composition).

The holes rusted through the top of that Buddha statue seemed Zen-like, somehow, and seeing the top floor wrapped in tarpaulins felt almost seductive, a veiling more like a Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrap than a view obscured by clouds. But the old concrete looked sad. I don’t think that the wabi-sabi aesthetic is as relevant for Fallingwater as the complementary Japanese value of cleanness (kirei), though the two are often combined as kirei-sabi, ‘an idea that combines the purity of beauty (“kirei”) with the allure of time and imperfection (“sabi”)’ according to the Internet.

Like the copperhead snake we once encountered on nearby Ferncliff Peninsula—land donated to the commonwealth by the Kauffman family—the house needs to shed its skin. That’s what happens at the two most sacred Shinto shrines in Japan, where all the buildings are entirely, painstakingly replaced every hundred years. Someday, if I ever get back to Ise, it’ll be interesting if it’s in a more kirei-sabi state than it was in 1985, when it looked utterly pristine among the old-growth cypress trees.

Speaking of trees, the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy is doing an impressive job of keeping the grounds looking ‘natural’: saving the eastern hemlock trees from woolly adelgids and excluding most invasive trees, shrubs and forbs, but the fantasy of living in harmony with nature seems increasingly threadbare as anthropogenic mass extinction looms.

In some ways, Fallingwater is a familiar Pennsylvania story: having a camp or cabin to retreat to is so common here, it’s contributed to extensive fragmentation of Pennsylvania wild areas, and to the extent that Fallingwater influenced that trend—and how could it have not, as instantly famous as it became—the Kauffmans might be thought to share some of the blame. But considering how much land they donated to the state to create Ohiopyle State Park, which kick-started an extensive state parks system that has become a model for many other states, I think to the contrary they were genuine conservation heroes, and I enjoyed learning more about them in an exhibition of well-edited home movies currently on display at the visitor center. Turns out they had a strong social conscience as well, and when the Depression hit, correctly understood their role in society (as our guide put it) and rather than laying anyone off, dramatically increased employment at their department store (Kauffmans in Pittsburgh). Then Edgar Jr. met an underemployed architect, and the rest is history.

More than anything, what I love when out hiking on the Allegheny Plateau is to climb among boulders of the Pottsville Formation, so it makes me happy that a world-famous architect fell in love with ‘Rocksylvania’ too, and that it revitalized his career and put him on the cover of Time. I’m grateful to the Kauffmans for the grace and generosity of their vision, and to the conservancy for being such good stewards of it. Long may Fallingwater continue to inspire with its message of reverence for the natural world.

All photos by me. Thanks to my mom, Marcia Bonta, for leading the way.

Eternal Self

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
In the puddled center of me, there is 
a sense that sometimes flickers— when
it's bright I'm convinced it must be
my eternal self, or something
like its thumbnail. Other times
when I try to remember what
it was that was trying to make itself
known, I say Who am I kidding? or
O you old still unformed cell of my being.
Mornings, I get its recent telegrams; or
its tight-muscled ambassadors ambush me.
When I flex, I press on the gas
and pretend I'm arrowing down 49th street,
straight down to the beach. I want
to roust, even just a little, the night
herons who are always leaving so much
sticky goop on the roofs of cars.

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 24

Poetry Blogging Network

A personal selection of posts from the Poetry Blogging Network and beyond. Although I tend to quote my favorite bits, please do click through and read the whole posts. You can also browse the blog digest archive at Via Negativa or, if you’d like it in your inbox, subscribe on Substack (where the posts might be truncated by some email providers).

This week: the flower phone, the broken timepiece, World Early Stroll Day, the romantic lives of badgers, and much more. Enjoy,

Continue reading “Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 24”

Maker

Sam Pepys and me

Up by 4 o’clock in the morning, and read Cicero’s Second Oration against Catiline, which pleased me exceedingly; and more I discern therein than ever I thought was to be found in him; but I perceive it was my ignorance, and that he is as good a writer as ever I read in my life.
By and by to Sir G. Carteret’s, to talk with him about yesterday’s difference at the office; and offered my service to look into any old books or papers that I have, that may make for him. He was well pleased therewith, and did much inveigh against Mr. Coventry; telling me how he had done him service in the Parliament, when Prin had drawn up things against him for taking of money for places; that he did at his desire, and upon his, letters, keep him off from doing it. And many other things he told me, as how the King was beholden to him, and in what a miserable condition his family would be, if he should die before he hath cleared his accounts. Upon the whole, I do find that he do much esteem of me, and is my friend, and I may make good use of him.
Thence to several places about business, among others to my brother’s, and there Tom Beneere the barber trimmed me.
Thence to my Lady’s, and there dined with her, Mr. Laxton, Gibbons, and Goldgroove with us, and after dinner some musique, and so home to my business, and in the evening my wife and I, and Sarah and the boy, a most pleasant walk to Halfway house, and so home and to bed.

in ignorance
I write my life out

yesterday’s paper
may tell me raw things

taking place
in any earhole

and I may make
other music


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 13 June 1662.

Showing our colors

Sam Pepys and me

Up before four o’clock, and after some business took Will forth, and he and I walked over the Tower Hill, but the gate not being open we walked through St. Catharine’s and Ratcliffe (I think it is) by the waterside above a mile before we could get a boat, and so over the water in a scull (which I have not done a great while), and walked finally to Deptford, where I saw in what forwardness the work is for Sir W. Batten’s house and mine, and it is almost ready. I also, with Mr. Davis, did view my cozen Joyce’s tallow, and compared it with the Irish tallow we bought lately, and found ours much more white, but as soft as it; now what is the fault, or whether it be or no a fault, I know not.
So walked home again as far as over against the Towre, and so over and home, where I found Sir W. Pen and Sir John Minnes discoursing about Sir John Minnes’s house and his coming to live with us, and I think he intends to have Mr. Turner’s house and he to come to his lodgings, which I shall be very glad of. We three did go to Mr. Turner’s to view his house, which I think was to the end that Sir John Minnes might see it.
Then by water with my wife to the Wardrobe, and dined there; and in the afternoon with all the children by water to Greenwich, where I showed them the King’s yacht, the house, and the park, all very pleasant; and so to the tavern, and had the musique of the house, and so merrily home again. Will and I walked home from the Wardrobe, having left my wife at the Tower Wharf coming by, whom I found gone to bed not very well, she having her month’s upon her. So to bed.

after the cat a rat
white as what is not

over and over
we turn to ink

to end the war
children green up


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Monday 16 June 1662.

Reconnaissance

river in November light between bare woods and mountain
Curfew, from Old French cuevrefeu, 
"cover fire;" Old French covrir,
"to cover, protect, conceal"
~ Etymonline




Not bells but sirens signal the time
for extinguishing fires, sweeping

ashes over any remaining smolder.
Which is to say, we save the rest

of our questions about whose and how many
new deaths for a less crepuscular hour.

But now we will feed each other. We open
envelopes of winged bean and rinse them;

wash the poison out of rice grains, boil
tubers rescued from their own kinds of

detention in the soil. Where we reconvene,
we tell each other we are not alone.

Continents of dust drift above cities
in the southwest. Yesterday, discordant

march of soldiers and creaking tanks. And yet,
the sky's constantly unfolding horoscope.