Month: December 2020

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Losing Maizy

still from Losing Maizy
This entry is part 29 of 40 in the series Pandemic Year

 


Watch on Vimeo

Maizy the terrier had always traveled in circles — around the park, around the block, around the garden — but toward the end her circles tightened drastically till they occupied no more than a corner of the kitchen. She no longer recognized her own front door and became utterly lost. Except, it seems, on the lap of her life-long companion, my partner Rachel. Her fits become more frequent and prolonged, each time leaving her a bit more impaired. Finally Rachel made the agonizing decision to have her euthanized. She found a vet who made house calls, and when the time came, held Maizy as if she were an infant while the drugs kicked in. Rachel said she felt her relax all over, and then, a few seconds later, simply stop breathing.

windy sidewalk
a spiral of leaves lying down
at my feet

It was hard not to be there with them in London. We’ve been crying a lot over Zoom. How strange it is, Rachel says, to wake up and walk around without Maizy. “Death is the only thing we know to be true,” says my 70-year-old friend L. We’ve been walking through an oak-hickory forest on a mostly unmarked trail for a couple of miles, and we’ve come to a T-intersection with a sign that points left to “Beach – 1 mile” and right to “Dead End – 1 mile.” We turn right. And after a mile we find ourselves in a large clearing filled with reindeer lichen. There are certainly worse places to end up.

curled
in a maze of roots
another life

***

Process notes

I hope it’s obvious what I was trying to do here. I did take quite a bit more time with this than usual, in part because I wasn’t there for Maizy’s death and burial (in the back garden). I wasn’t willing to write a haiku solely based on second-hand experience.

It might be worth sharing some of my alternate attempts at a closing haiku. For a placeholder while I worked on the video, I had something based on a morning porch observation several days ago:

mid-morning moon
the only cloud dissolving
into blue

which seemed Buddhist in a way I’m not, and didn’t bring it back to Maizy and circling, aside from the cyclical phases of the moon, which I continued to play with:

nestled
into a box
daytime moon

garden burial
the daytime moon’s
thinning tooth

maze of roots
for a cardboard coffin
another life

It occurred to me last night, while gazing at the edge of the woods where tree trunks were faintly visible, that it’s entirely accurate to consider trees (and plants in general) as beings of light, however New Agey that may sound.

For what it’s worth, I believe this is the first I’ve ever included a post-credits scene in a videopoem. But surely the dead deserve a secret ending.

Posted on by Dave Bonta

Confessional pitfall

(Lord’s day). Up, and to church with my wife. A dull sermon of Mr. Mills, and then home, without strangers to dinner, and then my wife to read, and I to the office, enter my journall to this day, and so home with great content that it is done, but with sorrow to my eyes. Then home, and got my wife to read to me out of Fuller’s Church History, when by and by comes Captain Cocke, who sat with me all the evening, talking, and I find by him, as by all others, that we are like to expect great confusions, and most of our discourse was the same, and did agree with that the last night, particularly that about the difference between the King and the Duke of York which is like to be. He tells me that he hears that Sir W. Coventry was, a little before the Duke of York fell sick, with the Duke of York in his closet, and fell on his knees, and begged his pardon for what he hath done to my Lord Chancellor; but this I dare not soon believe. But he tells me another thing, which he says he had from the person himself who spoke with the Duke of Buckingham, who, he says, is a very sober and worthy man, that he did lately speak with the Duke of Buckingham about his greatness now with the King, and told him- “But, sir, these things that the King do now, in suffering the Parliament to do all this, you know are not fit for the King to suffer, and you know how often you have said to me that the King was a weak man, and unable to govern, but to be governed, and that you could command him as you listed; why do you suffer him to go on in these things?” — “Why,” says the Duke of Buckingham, “I do suffer him to do this, that I may hereafter the better command him.” This he swears to me the person himself to whom the Duke of Buckingham said this did tell it him, and is a man of worth, understanding, and credit. He told me one odd passage by the Duke of Albemarle, speaking how hasty a man he is, and how for certain he would have killed Sir W. Coventry, had he met him in a little time after his shewing his letter in the House. He told me that a certain lady, whom he knows, did tell him that, she being certainly informed that some of the Duke of Albemarle’s family did say that the Earl of Torrington was a bastard, [she] did think herself concerned to tell the Duke of Albemarle of it, and did first tell the Duchesse, and was going to tell the old man, when the Duchesse pulled her back by the sleeve, and hindered her, swearing to her that if he should hear it, he would certainly kill the servant that should be found to have said it, and therefore prayed her to hold her peace. One thing more he told me, which is, that Garraway is come to town, and is thinking how to bring the House to mind the public state of the nation and to put off these particular piques against man and man, and that he propounding this to Sir W. Coventry, Sir W. Coventry did give no encouragement to it: which he says is that by their running after other men he may escape. But I do believe this is not true neither. But however I am glad that Garraway is here, and that he do begin to think of the public condition in reference to our neighbours that we are in, and in reference to ourselves, whereof I am mightily afeard of trouble. So to supper, and he gone and we to bed.

I enter my journal
on my knees

it says you are not
fit to suffer

you know how often
you have killed time

by running after other
true selves

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 November 1667.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Taste, Smell

Anosmia, Hyposmia—lately, I learned  
these are the loss of smell and taste,  

respectively: not the names of minor 
goddesses in ancient mythology, nor

of their attendants in waiting. How sad
to wake in one's bed unable to detect 

that someone is in the kitchen making  
toast, eggs and bacon, or greasy sausages. 

Sadder still, to sit at the table 
only to find a formerly luxurious pat

of butter as well as a caramelly cup
of your favorite coffee are in-

distinguishable from mouthfuls 
of wet cardboard. But even these 

are bearable in contrast to rapid
decline and death. In the Exodus

story, the people fled Egypt and the ten 
plagues, which scholars have theorized

could have included airborne bacteria
and disease— even some early form 

of climate change which poisoned 
the rivers and killed all the fish

and frogs. And yet, crossing the barren
desert, they had quail and manna, which

they likened to coriander seed or honey. 
Then and thereafter, heroic crossings 

are marked with strife and deprivation.
On the long ocean voyage they took

to get to another version of a promised
land, Bulosan wrote of how some of his 

cohort of pensionados and migrant workers 
resorted to softening torn newspaper

pages in water, which they chewed slowly
if only to trick their hunger. It might 

be said that toward the end of their journey, 
language was their only sustenance. The fields

waited, and hard labor in the soil. Among them, 
some were chroniclers of all they saw and tasted.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Private space

At the office all the morning, and at noon took my Lord Bruncker into the garden, and there told him of his man Carcasses proceedings against the Office in the House of Commons. I did [not] desire nor advise him anything, but in general, that the end of this might be ruin to the Office, but that we shall be brought to fencing for ourselves, and that will be no profit to the office, but let it light where it would I thought I should be as well as any body. This I told him, and so he seeming to be ignorant of it, and not pleased with it, we broke off by Sir Thos. Harvy’s coming to us from the Pay Office, whither we had sent a smart letter we had writ to him this morning about keeping the clerks at work at the making up the books, which I did to place the fault somewhere, and now I let him defend himself. He was mighty angry, and particularly with me, but I do not care, but do rather desire it, for I will not spare him, that we shall bear the blame, and such an idle fellow as he have 500l. a year for nothing. So we broke off, and I home to dinner, and then to the office, and having spent the afternoon on letters, I took coach in the evening, and to White Hall, where there is to be a performance of musique of Pelham’s before the King. The company not come; but I did go into the musique-room, where Captain Cocke and many others; and here I did hear the best and the smallest organ go that ever I saw in my life, and such a one as, by the grace of God, I will have the next year, if I continue in this condition, whatever it cost me. I never was so pleased in my life. Thence, it being too soon, I to Westminster Hall, it being now about 7 at night, and there met Mr. Gregory, my old acquaintance, an understanding gentleman; and he and I walked an hour together, talking of the bad prospect of the times; and the sum of what I learn from him is this: That the King is the most concerned in the world against the Chancellor, and all people that do not appear against him, and therefore is angry with the Bishops, having said that he had one Bishop on his side (Crofts), and but one: that Buckingham and Bristoll are now his only Cabinet Council; and that, before the Duke of York fell sick, Buckingham was admitted to the King of his Cabinet, and there stayed with him several hours, and the Duke of York shut out. That it is plain that there is dislike between the King and Duke of York, and that it is to be feared that the House will go so far against the Chancellor, that they must do something to undo the Duke of York, or will not think themselves safe. That this Lord Vaughan, that is so great against the Chancellor, is one of the lewdest fellows of the age, worse than Sir Charles Sidly; and that he was heard to swear, God damn him, he would do my Lord Clarendon’s business. That he do find that my Lord Clarendon hath more friends in both Houses than he believes he would have, by reason that they do see what are the hands that pull him down; which they do not like. That Harry Coventry was scolded at by the King severely the other day; and that his answer was that, if he must not speak what he thought in this business in Parliament, he must not come thither. And he says that by this very business Harry Coventry hath got more fame and common esteem than any gentleman in England hath at this day, and is an excellent and able person. That the King, who not long ago did say of Bristoll, that he was a man able in three years to get himself a fortune in any kingdom in the world, and lose all again in three months, do now hug him, and commend his parts every where, above all the world. How fickle is this man [the King], and how unhappy we like to be! That he fears some furious courses will be taken against the Duke of York; and that he hath heard that it was designed, if they cannot carry matters against the Chancellor, to impeach the Duke of York himself, which God forbid! That Sir Edward Nicholas, whom he served while Secretary, is one of the best men in the world, but hated by the Queen-Mother, for a service he did the old King against her mind and her favourites; and that she and my Lady Castlemayne did make the King to lay him aside: but this man says that he is one of the most perfect heavenly and charitable men in the whole world. That the House of Commons resolve to stand by their proceedings, and have chosen a Committee to draw up the reasons thereof to carry to the Lords; which is likely to breed great heat between them. That the Parliament, after all this, is likely to give the King no money; and, therefore, that it is to be wondered what makes the King give way to so great extravagancies, which do all tend to the making him less than he is, and so will, every day more and more: and by this means every creature is divided against the other, that there never was so great an uncertainty in England, of what would, be the event of things, as at this day; nobody being at ease, or safe. Being full of his discourse, and glad of the rencontre, I to White Hall; and there got into the theater-room, and there heard both the vocall and instrumentall musick, where the little fellow stood keeping time; but for my part, I see no great matter, but quite the contrary in both sorts of musique. The composition I believe is very good, but no more of delightfulness to the eare or understanding but what is very ordinary. Here was the King and Queen, and some of the ladies; among whom none more jolly than my Lady Buckingham, her Lord being once more a great man.
Thence by coach home and to my office, ended my letters, and then home to supper, and, my eyes being bad, to bed.

morning garden
light as music for the smallest
organ in the world

the people are shut out
like a common tune

how unhappy we will be
in the most perfect heaven

to give way to every creature
in what would be a theater
of the ear

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 November 1667.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

In winter, night falls faster—

as if in the same way the Greek philosopher  
suggested, believing the speed at which two  

objects fall is directly proportional  
to their weight and inversely  

proportional to the medium through which  
they plummet. In this, he may have been more  

poet than philosopher; surely, more than  
his famous mentor who in fact wished to turn

poets out of the city gates. In the late
1500s, a young mathematician dropped two

lead spheres of unequal weight from a tipping-
over tower, disproving common knowledge

then about gravity. How old this light,
which used to fall gold-gilded through 

the summer months, but now hides its face 
in the umbral hours; and how old our disquiet

from the speed with which the darkness  
could take us. The weight we bear or don't 

bear, traversing a forest of years.
Alluvial earth, monsoons. Does it matter 

we can't even pinpoint the actual cause 
of our distress? Our bodies move toward 

the same ground at more or less the same
speed: in one hand, a feather; in the other, 

that aggregate of fire and flickering; bright
gashes, lighthouse beams which we call a life.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

Out in the open

Up, and to Alderman Backewell’s and there discoursed with him about the remitting of this 6000l. to Tangier, which he hath promised to do by the first post, and that will be by Monday next, the 18th, and he and I agreed that I would take notice of it that so he may be found to have done his best upon the desire of the Lords Commissioners. From this we went to discourse of his condition, and he with some vain glory told me that the business of Sheernesse did make him quite mad, and indeed might well have undone him; but yet that he did the very next day pay here and got bills to answer his promise to the King for the Swedes Embassadors (who were then doing our business at the treaty at Breda) 7000l., and did promise the Bankers there, that if they would draw upon him all that he had of theirs and 10,000l. more, he would answer it. He told me that Serjeant Maynard come to him for a sum of money that he had in his hands of his, and so did many others, and his answer was, What countrymen are you? And when they told him, why then, says he, here is a tally upon the Receiver of your country for so [much], and to yours for so much, and did offer to lay by tallies to the full value of all that he owed in the world, and 40,000l. more for the security thereof, and not to touch a penny of his own till the full of what he owed was paid, which so pleased every body that he hath mastered all, so that he hath lent the Commissioners of the Treasury above 40,000l. in money since that business, and did this morning offer to a lady who come to give him notice that she should need her money 3000l., in twenty days, he bid her if she pleased send for it to-day and she should have it. Which is a very great thing, and will make them greater than ever they were, I am apt to think, in some time.
Thence to Westminster, and there I walked with several, and do hear that there is to be a conference between the two Houses today; so I stayed: and it was only to tell the Commons that the Lords cannot agree to the confining or sequestring of the Earle of Clarendon from the Parliament, forasmuch as they do not specify any particular crime which they lay upon him and call Treason. This the House did receive, and so parted: at which, I hear, the Commons are like to grow very high, and will insist upon their privileges, and the Lords will own theirs, though the Duke of Buckingham, Bristoll, and others, have been very high in the House of Lords to have had him committed. This is likely to breed ill blood. Thence I away home, calling at my mercer’s and tailor’s, and there find, as I expected, Mr. Caesar and little Pelham Humphreys, lately returned from France, and is an absolute Monsieur, as full of form, and confidence, and vanity, and disparages everything, and everybody’s skill but his own. The truth is, every body says he is very able, but to hear how he laughs at all the King’s musick here, as Blagrave and others, that they cannot keep time nor tune, nor understand anything; and that Grebus, the Frenchman, the King’s master of the musick, how he understands nothing, nor can play on any instrument, and so cannot compose: and that he will give him a lift out of his place; and that he and the King are mighty great! and that he hath already spoke to the King of Grebus would make a man piss. I had a good dinner for them, as a venison pasty and some fowl, and after dinner we did play, he on the theorbo. Mr. Caesar on his French lute, and I on the viol, but made but mean musique, nor do I see that this Frenchman do so much wonders on the theorbo, but without question he is a good musician, but his vanity do offend me. They gone, towards night, I to the office awhile, and then home and to my chamber, where busy till by and by comes Mr. Moore, and he staid and supped and talked with me about many things, and tells me his great fear that all things will go to ruin among us, for that the King hath, as he says Sir Thomas Crew told him, been heard to say that the quarrel is not between my Lord Chancellor and him, but his brother and him; which will make sad work among us if that be once promoted, as to be sure it will, Buckingham and Bristoll being now the only counsel the King follows, so as Arlington and Coventry are come to signify little. He tells me they are likely to fall upon my Lord Sandwich; but, for my part, sometimes I am apt to think they cannot do him much harm, he telling me that there is no great fear of the business of Resumption! By and by, I got him to read part of my Lord Cooke’s chapter of treason, which is mighty well worth reading, and do inform me in many things, and for aught I see it is useful now to know what these crimes are. And then to supper, and after supper he went away, and so I got the girl to comb my head, and then to bed, my eyes bad.
This day, Poundy, the waterman, was with me, to let me know that he was summonsed to bear witness against me to Prince Rupert’s people (who have a commission to look after the business of prize-goods) about the business of the prize-goods I was concerned in: but I did desire him to speak all he knew, and not to spare me, nor did promise nor give him any thing, but sent him away with good words, to bid him say all he knew to be true. This do not trouble me much.

we may be done with glory
but who were our hands

why is your country yours
who did not make it

night comes and I fear
all things will go to ruin

like my eyes that have
a commission to look

and not to spare me
anything true

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 November 1667.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Universum

You're always talking about how the past
is not the past and instead fully here, as long
as one keeps remembering the moment 
of tragedy 
                or rupture— your father 
slipping into a coma then dying a week later; 
the last time your child spoke to you 
before turning 
               away in anger. You imagine
something like Escher's famous lithograph 
set in a world that apparently has 
at least 
            two sources of gravity. 
Seven sets of stairs lead up and down
inside a spacious house with arched
doorways and cool 
                     tiles, windows 
overlooking well tended gardens or 
a park. The picture is called Relativity, 
which brings 
               to mind the laws of physics 
making up the space-time continuum:  
events occurring at one time for one
observer could be 
                    perceived by another
as taking place at a different time.
Thus, some figures going about their day
in the print 
                 seem to be upside down
as they climb, while others descend
the same steps but on the other side.
Should they 
                    happen to pass 
or catch a glimpse of each other,   
you wonder if there'd be a flicker
of recognition. 
                You wonder if they ever
really go anywhere, or if one of them
has ever thought to slide down 
(up?) a bannister. 
                     How long have they   
held to the same orbits, speeding up or
slowing down depending on how acutely
an old 
       hurt or memory presses its fingers,
dimpling the foccacia dough? Perhaps 
they've traced the same donut loop around 
and around 
           so many times, they've forgotten
where they met themselves. All they know
is they must be going somewhere called
either tomorrow or the future.
Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Call and Response

A short worry list— That snow 
might not fall this winter, 

or the next, and the next after that. 
Might never again remind us of things 

like spiderwebs and ivory lace. 
That rivers boil without cease. 

That the fig tree and the persimmon 
might be so overcome, they'll forget 

how to sew anything again 
except patched brown garments

thinner than cheap fashion
made by women with vacant eyes

in sweatshops. That pine forests 
become only the verb in their names. 

But imagine, insist the ghosts 
of lost or departed things—  

Picture the form of someone who goes 
to bed with you, spreads your hair 

like a beautiful fan on the pillow  
or brings you dreams of cool melons 

arranged on a blue plate. From which
window could you find again a pearled 

flicker of wings at dawn, above water? 
Imagine the press of a soft wax seal 

on your lids, embossed with tiny vines 
and fleurs-des-lis; the anticipated 

delight of lifting the flap 
of an envelope perhaps enclosing 

a love letter. Which is to say— 
when they speak of things 

like hope, they mean something 
opens, or opens again.
Posted on by Dave Bonta

In the small hours

At the office close all the morning. At noon, all my clerks with me to dinner, to a venison pasty; and there comes Creed, and dined with me, and he tells me how high the Lords were in the Lords’ House about the business of the Chancellor, and that they are not yet agreed to impeach him. After dinner, he and I, and my wife and girl, the latter two to their tailor’s, and he and I to the Committee of the Treasury, where I had a hearing, but can get but 6000l. for the pay of the garrison, in lieu of above 16,000l.; and this Alderman Backewell gets remitted there, and I am glad of it. Thence by coach took up my wife and girl, and so home, and set down Creed at Arundell House, going to the Royal Society, whither I would be glad to go, but cannot. Thence home, and to the Office, where about my letters, and so home to supper, and to bed, my eyes being bad again; and by this means, the nights, now-a-days, do become very long to me, longer than I can sleep out.

my past comes with me
in lieu of my wife
to bed

the nights nowadays
become longer than I
can sleep

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 November 1667.

Posted on by Luisa A. Igloria

Ground Zero

 
What eye barely blinks
in what firmament, 
trying out oblivion

on us? Halons pierce 
the ozone blanket 
and omens drop from the skies:
dead birds, powdered bees.

The world burns and thirsts
and bodies fill the earth.
As waters grow heavy,

coral reefs put on white
funeral clothes. 
Once, I plucked a tiny 
bleached skull out of sparse 

grass— its rostrum still
a small wonderment, hinging 
at the flange where the two 

mandibles join: where a mouth
had opened and asked for such
a small need to be filled.