August 2025 – Page 4 – Via Negativa

August 18, 2025August 18, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

If I Write To You, Will You Answer

river in November light between bare woods and mountain

A poet has assigned one letter of the alphabet
to each of 26 nucleotide triplets that form
the basic units of genetic code. ~ ZME Science




Seed the idea of a world 
in a cell— 
            Its blazons and beehives, 
its cascade of crystals, mangroves 
and mycelial threads. 
                      Not the summary 
of an event but the eidos of it. Imagine 
a generation of cranes 
                       rising from a plain 
after they have been forgotten; after they've 
become extinct. Don't we want 
                              to lure our dead
loves back from the swamps of oblivion? We
feed language into 
                   the undulating mechanism, 
to see how it might withstand extremity.

August 18, 2025August 18, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Poetry Blog Digest 2025, Week 33

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: polar bears in the pews, the pace of chance, bioluminescent joy, the secretary spider, and much more. Enjoy!

August 17, 2025August 17, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Cellular

When we walk into the house, the storm door takes
a moment to shut itself.

Now I try to pay attention to where else there might be
small signs of resistance.

The bony side of my big toe chafes against the inside
of my leather shoe.  

Someone was telling me about a game developed by a 
mathematician, designed for the observation of how a seed
or cell evolves within a system.

Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbors dies, 
as if by underpopulation.

Or reproduces and lives on to the next generation.
And so on.

When my daughter found out about dogwood berries,
she picked two from a tree we pass on the way 
to our favorite cafe.

My most elusive memory is of a field of white,
rippled and alive; and of my feet barely touching
the surface.

I always think I have time, until it proves me wrong.

We wait for the promised taste of custardy sweetness.

Some kinds of ripeness are needed by birds before
their long migrations.

August 17, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Commensal

(Lord’s day). Up very early, this being the last Sunday that the Presbyterians are to preach, unless they read the new Common Prayer and renounce the Covenant, and so I had a mind to hear Dr. Bates’s farewell sermon, and walked thither, calling first at my brother’s, where I found that he is come home after being a week abroad with Dr. Pepys, nobody knows where, nor I but by chance, that he was gone, which troubles me. So I called only at the door, but did not ask for him, but went to Madam Turner’s to know whether she went to church, and to tell her that I would dine with her; and so walked to St. Dunstan’s, where, it not being seven o’clock yet, the doors were not open; and so I went and walked an hour in the Temple-garden, reading my vows, which it is a great content to me to see how I am a changed man in all respects for the better, since I took them, which the God of Heaven continue to me, and make me thankful for.
At eight o’clock I went, and crowded in at a back door among others, the church being half-full almost before any doors were open publicly; which is the first time that I have done so these many years since I used to go with my father and mother, and so got into the gallery, beside the pulpit, and heard very well. His text was, “Now the God of Peace—;” the last Hebrews, and the 20th verse: he making a very good sermon, and very little reflections in it to any thing of the times. Besides the sermon, I was very well pleased with the sight of a fine lady that I have often seen walk in Graye’s Inn Walks, and it was my chance to meet her again at the door going out, and very pretty and sprightly she is, and I believe the same that my wife and I some years since did meet at Temple Bar gate and have sometimes spoke of. So to Madam Turner’s, and dined with her. She had heard Parson Herring take his leave; tho’ he, by reading so much of the Common Prayer as he did, hath cast himself out of the good opinion of both sides.
After dinner to St. Dunstan’s again; and the church quite crowded before I came, which was just at one o’clock; but I got into the gallery again, but stood in a crowd and did exceedingly sweat all the time. He pursued his text again very well; and only at the conclusion told us, after this manner: “I do believe that many of you do expect that I should say something to you in reference to the time, this being the last time that possibly I may appear here. You know it is not my manner to speak any thing in the pulpit that is extraneous to my text and business; yet this I shall say, that it is not my opinion, fashion, or humour that keeps me from complying with what is required of us; but something which, after much prayer, discourse, and study yet remains unsatisfied, and commands me herein. Wherefore, if it is my unhappiness not to receive such an illumination as should direct me to do otherwise, I know no reason why men should not pardon me in this world, and am confident that God will pardon me for it in the next.” And so he concluded.
Parson Herring read a psalm and chapters before sermon; and one was the chapter in the Acts, where the story of Ananias and Sapphira is. And after he had done, says he, “This is just the case of England at present. God he bids us to preach, and men bid us not to preach; and if we do, we are to be imprisoned and further punished. All that I can say to it is, that I beg your prayers, and the prayers of all good Christians, for us.” This was all the exposition he made of the chapter in these very words, and no more.
I was much pleased with Dr. Bates’s manner of bringing in the Lord’s Prayer after his own; thus, “In whose comprehensive words we sum up all our imperfect desires; saying, ‘Our Father,’” &c. Church being done and it raining I took a hackney coach and so home, being all in a sweat and fearful of getting cold.
To my study at my office, and thither came Mr. Moore to me and walked till it was quite dark. Then I wrote a letter to my Lord Privy Seale as from my Lord for Mr. ——— to be sworn directly by deputy to my Lord, he denying to swear him as deputy together with me. So that I am now clear of it, and the profit is now come to be so little that I am not displeased at my getting off so well.
He being gone I to my study and read, and so to eat a bit of bread and cheese and so to bed.
I hear most of the Presbyters took their leaves to-day, and that the City is much dissatisfied with it. I pray God keep peace among us, and make the Bishops careful of bringing in good men in their rooms, or else all will fly a-pieces; for bad ones will not [go] down with the City.

they renounce the brother
nobody knows and lock
the doors to heaven

I believe in the crowd
but the crowd only believe
in fashion

what is required of us
is to know this world
and not a fur of words

I walk a little
on my bread and cheese
a careful fly

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 17 August 1662.

August 16, 2025August 16, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

A Theory of Everything

The simple perfectness of a half moon floats into the sky near midnight.

It puts fog lights and the incandescence of street lamps to shame.

I have been reading about retrocausality, which physicists say 
is the possibility that future outcomes might reach backward
to shape conditions in the present.

There is a dress with a mustard yellow print I found in a drawer,
which I once imagined wearing to an indeterminate event.

If I unfold it from its tissue wrapper, put it on now 
then go out to dinner, will it be like the me today 
reaching back to the self that desired this years ago?

We are always thinking of time as a progression of increments
moving in one direction.

Sometimes I cannot seem to tell what day it is, but the smell
of burned toast means Monday. 

Or I become stuck in a memory, which is a moment built up of 
strings of ticking parts. 

I clipped a stalk of jasmine from a bush, but it did not die
even if it could have.

In the future, I am already setting its flowers in a vase.

On the sill, some nights, the water pulls the moon down
its smooth glass throat.

August 16, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Imagine

Up by 4 a-clock. And up looking over my work, what they did yesterday; and am pretty well pleased, but I find it will be long before they have done, though the house is cover-d and I free from the weather.
We met and sat all the morning, and at noon was sent for by my Uncle Wight to Mr. Rawlinson’s, and there we had a pigg, and Dr Fairebrother came to me to see me and dined with us. And after dinner he went away, and I by my uncles desire stayed; and there he begun to discourse about our difference with Mr. Young about Flaggs, pleading for him, which he did desire might be made up; but I told him how things was, and so he was satisfied and said no more. So home and above with my workmen, who I find busy and my work going on pretty well. And so to my office till night; and so to eat a bit and so to bed.

we have free weather
and all the morning air

to me and you
a flag for desire

thin as no more
home above us

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Saturday 16 August 1662.

August 15, 2025August 15, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

Chronicle of Small Moments in Time

Heat saturates
every aspect of this world.
If not heat, then cold.

On the bottom step of the patio,
unmoving: the perfect wire 
symmetry of a dragonfly.

In a clump of grass a few 
meters away, the armor
shed by a lone cicada. 

When the stars emerge
tonight, will they let down
a ladder for them to ascend?

In the shadow of the fig
tree, the secretary spider
keeps writing.

August 15, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Assisted living

Up very early, and up about seeing how my work proceeds, and am pretty well pleased therewith; especially my wife’s closet will be very pretty. So to the office and there very busy, and many people coming to me. At noon to the Change, and there hear of some Quakers that are seized on, that would have blown up the prison in Southwark where they are put. So to the Swan, in Old Fish Street, where Mr. Brigden and his father-in-law, Blackbury, of whom we had bought timber in the office, but have not dealt well with us, did make me a fine dinner only to myself; and after dinner comes in a jugler, which shewed us very pretty tricks. I seemed very pleasant, but am no friend to the man’s dealings with us in the office. After an hour or two sitting after dinner talking about office business, where I had not spent any time a great while, I went to Paul’s Church Yard to my bookseller’s; and there I hear that next Sunday will be the last of a great many Presbyterian ministers in town, who, I hear, will give up all. I pray God the issue may be good, for the discontent is great. Home and to my office till 9 at night doing business, and so to bed. My mind well pleased with a letter I found at home from Mr. Coventry, expressing his satisfaction in a letter I writ last night, and sent him this morning, to be corrected by him in order to its sending down to all the Yards as a charge to them.

we will be pretty in the prison
where they put old fish

bury us only after dinner
in our books

the next sun will go on
doing business with night

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 15 August 1662.

August 14, 2025August 14, 2025 by Luisa A. Igloria

The Gods of Water

A thirty-four foot bronze statue 
of Neptune looks out over the oceanfront,
trident in one hand and loggerhead turtle
in the other. Two dolphins and an octopus
clamber up the statue's stone base. I know
there's more than one god of water, more 
than one god of fire and more than one 
story about the way this earth was created, 
which creature holds its core steady. Otherwise, 
the underworld is an idea too strange to fathom. 
Too difficult to think of how, when a wave recedes 
so far and so clean out to the horizon, it could 
return with such force to be an act of judgment.

August 14, 2025 by Dave Bonta

Oak woods (2)

Up early and to look on my works, and find my house to go on apace. So to my office to prepare business, and then we met and sat till noon, and then Commissioner Pett and I being invited, went by Sir John Winter’s coach sent for us, to the Mitre, in Fenchurch street, to a venison-pasty; where I found him a very worthy man; and good discourse. Most of which was concerning the Forest of Dean, and the timber there, and iron-workes with their great antiquity, and the vast heaps of cinders which they find, and are now of great value, being necessary for the making of iron at this day; and without which they cannot work: with the age of many trees there left at a great fall in Edward the Third’s time, by the name of forbid-trees, which at this day are called vorbid trees.
Thence to my office about business till late, and so home and to bed.

winter forest

the vast iron-work of time
called trees

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 14 August 1662—a slight revision of my original draft from 2015.

For what it’s worth, I spent the same several hours on this erasure poem as I usually do, playing with every possibility I could see. And unless I start running into lengthy stretches of unimprovable first drafts, I’ll continue to attempt re-writes of each erasure at least till the end of 2026. In 2027 I’ll catch up with the annual PDF compilations, and make a decision at that point about whether to keep going. In the meantime, when I do find a poetic draft I can’t improve on at all, I will link back to it in the footnote to the next new or revised erasure.