[I paid to free from a dinner dish
two dozen larks, a great company,
and all were merry.
They drank a bottle of wine, fell down,
and ate from my hand.]
Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 26 January 1659/60.
Dave Bonta (bio) often suffers from imposter syndrome, but not in a bad way — more like some kind of flower-breathing dragon, pot-bellied and igneous. Be that as it may, all of his writing here is available for reuse and creative remix under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License. For attribution in printed material, his name (Dave Bonta) will suffice, but for web use, please link back to the original. Contact him for permission to waive the “share alike” provision (e.g. for use in a conventionally copyrighted work).
The first two lines are particularly inspired, I think. The four-and-twenty blackbirds come to mind.
Thanks. Yeah, I guess that was inevitable. But I was just so shocked to learn that eating larks was commonplace in Pepys’ day.