They come together in spring or summer,
recalling the old timbre of brass bands,
the vision of younger sisters waking at dawn
to put on majorette's costumes and high boots.
Their towns' most handsome will smile and wave
from flower-bedecked floats, and queens touch
the edges of butterfly sleeves, lightly holding
the pearl of a smile. Though now in other climes,
neither frost nor sun dampen the shine of chrome
nor the flourish of cornets and euphoniums. Saints
dressed as children or carpenters, farmers or
fishermen are borne aloft in the streets, gems
of paste winking from foil-covered crowns. Rice
grains turned into petals dyed yellow and green
curtain each window looking out— not over fields
and volcanoes but train tracks and city skylines.
Mob rule
(Sunday). Sir W. Pen got trimmed before me, and so took the coach to Portsmouth to wait on my Lord Steward to church, and sent the coach for me back again. So I rode to church, and met my Lord Chamberlain upon the walls of the garrison, who owned and spoke to me. I followed him in the crowd of gallants through the Queen’s lodgings to chappell; the rooms being all rarely furnished, and escaped hardly being set on fire yesterday. At chappell we had a most excellent and eloquent sermon. And here I spoke and saluted Mrs. Pierce, but being in haste could not learn of her where her lodgings are, which vexes me. Thence took Ned Pickering to dinner with us, and the two Marshes, father and Son, dined with us, and very merry. After dinner Sir W. Batten and I, the Doctor, and Ned Pickering by coach to the Yard, and there on board the Swallow in the dock hear our navy chaplain preach a sad sermon, full of nonsense and false Latin; but prayed for the Right Honourable the principal officers. After sermon took him to Mr. Tippets’s to drink a glass of wine, and so at 4 back again by coach to Portsmouth, and then visited the Mayor, Mr. Timbrell, our anchor-smith, who showed us the present they have for the Queen; which is a salt-sellar of silver, the walls christall, with four eagles and four greyhounds standing up at the top to bear up a dish; which indeed is one of the neatest pieces of plate that ever I saw, and the case is very pretty also.
This evening came a merchantman in the harbour, which we hired at London to carry horses to Portugall; but, Lord! what running there was to the seaside to hear what news, thinking it had come from the Queen. In the evening Sir George, Sir W. Pen and I walked round the walls, and thence we two with the Doctor to the yard, and so to supper and to bed.
war rode the crowd
into fire
a sad sermon
full of false Latin
for mouth and timbrel
eagle and hound
a dish of red sea
round the walls
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 27 April 1662.
Wearing the Skin
Sometimes I hum as I wield the knife
over the rind of a potato, over the coarse
grain holding in the sweet gold of a squash.
Some mornings when I wake and feel the old
familiar tendrils of that unshakeable
sadness brush against my cheeks, I want
to curl back into the shape of my own
skin. It takes tenderness to peel away
what held you so long in the dark.
And so, much as I admire the self-
containment of the daikon, also
I can't help loving how it's blushed
with the palest stroke of green.
Undeadly
Sir George and I, and his clerk Mr. Stephens, and Mr. Holt our guide, over to Gosport; and so rode to Southampton. In our way, besides my Lord Southampton’s parks and lands, which in one view we could see 6,000l. per annum, we observed a little church-yard, where the graves are accustomed to be all sowed with sage. At Southampton we went to the Mayor’s and there dined, and had sturgeon of their own catching the last week, which do not happen in twenty years, and it was well ordered. They brought us also some caveare, which I attempted to order, but all to no purpose, for they had neither given it salt enough, nor are the seedes of the roe broke, but are all in berryes. The towne is one most gallant street, and is walled round with stone, &c., and Bevis’s picture upon one of the gates; many old walls of religious houses, and the key, well worth seeing. After dinner to horse again, being in nothing troubled but the badness of my hat, which I borrowed to save my beaver. Home by night and wrote letters to London, and so with Sir W. Pen to the Dock to bed.
in my little grave I am
not tempted to purpose
neither salt nor seed
hero to one stone
and one old horse
which I borrow by night
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 26 April 1662.
Achievement
The wheel and the chariot. The lever,
the nail, the spirit level. That moment
when the earth was unseated as center
of the universe, after who knows how
many scientists were publicly condemned
for pointing out the sun. The feather
and the ball, dropping at the same rate
due to gravity. The compass and the caravelle,
navigation by the stars. The printing press,
moveable type, sewing needles. Pasteurized
milk and clean hands in the surgery. With each
discovery, how we then proclaimed a new
pinnacle of human success. Pyramids and
pagodas, spices and sugar; lower death
rates, cures for most things except
the common cold, avarice, cruelty, and
ego. Who wants the gold medal at the end
of this race? The athlete crumples onto
concrete in a spasm of joy and pain.
Doctoring
All the morning at Portsmouth, at the Pay, and then to dinner, and again to the Pay; and at night got the Doctor to go lie with me, and much pleased with his company; but I was much troubled in my eyes, by reason of the healths I have this day been forced to drink.
morning a mouth
and night the doctor
to ease my eyes
I have a drink
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 25 April 1662.
Ticker
Up and to Sir G. Carteret’s lodgings at Mrs. Stephens’s, where we keep our table all the time we are here. Thence all of us to the Pay-house; but the books not being ready, we went to church to the lecture, where there was my Lord Ormond and Manchester, and much London company, though not so much as I expected. Here we had a very good sermon upon this text: “In love serving one another;” which pleased me very well. No news of the Queen at all. So to dinner; and then to the Pay all the afternoon. Then W. Pen and I walked to the King’s Yard, and there lay at Mr. Tippets’s, where exceeding well treated.
I keep time
in my chest
no love serving
the soft afternoon
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 24 April 1662.
Stream
Look at the birds of the air...
~ Matthew 6:26
They do not sow and neither
do they
reap Nor can they
add or take away
from a single
hour of my life
Yet they
clock the seasons and make
on the sky a moving
wonderment of letters
A language of such
quick punctuation
I understand
is the nature of belief
One wing tilts
The river follows
Vertical Transmission
Meaning through your mother's
bloodstream
at birth
Or through lactation
Mouth closed around a notch
a node
to catch warm
milky spurt
But now you are of
an age
with scant
or nonexistent childhood
records
When did your skin stipple
with so much burn and loneliness
How many years
did you see that double-stranded
shadow
helix behind closed lids
This condition
supposed to be endemic
in your part of the world
Spherical and enveloped
Cells flood the brick-colored organ
Your hands helpless against the
flutter
as if some otherworldly
force came nightly to feast
Then in the morning
the thing grown back
And you
bound to the rock
Your own eternal
observer
Clearing
Up early, and to Petersfield, and there dined well; and thence got a countryman to guide us by Havant, to avoid going through the Forest; but he carried us much out of the way, and upon our coming we sent away an express to Sir W. Batten to stop his coming, which I did project to make good my oath, that my wife should come if any of our wives came, which my Lady Batten did intend to do with her husband. The Doctor and I lay together at Wiard’s, the chyrurgeon’s, in Portsmouth, his wife a very pretty woman. We lay very well and merrily; in the morning, concluding him to be of the eldest blood and house of the Clerkes, because that all the fleas came to him and not to me.
a field in the forest
the press of her mouth
a well of the eldest blood
me and not me
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 23 April 1662.