Via Negativa

The lifeless squid 
still releases a potent ink
into our vinegary broth—

Alive, its one eye gazed upward
and its other, smaller eye swept
across the cloudy deep.

What could I do if I had eight arms 
enfolding a beak, inside of which I hid 
a tongue studded with rows of teeth?

(Lord’s day). At home all the morning, putting my papers in order against my going to-morrow and doing many things else to that end. Had a good dinner, and Stankes and his wife with us. To my business again in the afternoon, and in the evening came the two Trices, Mr. Greene, and Mr. Philips, and so we began to argue. At last it came to some agreement that for our giving of my aunt 10l. she is to quit the house, and for other matters they are to be left to the law, which do please us all, and so we broke up, pretty well satisfyed.
Then came Mr. Barnwell and J. Bowles and supped with us, and after supper away, and so I having taken leave of them and put things in the best order I could against to-morrow I went to bed.
Old William Luffe having been here this afternoon and paid up his bond of 20l., and I did give him into his hand my uncle’s surrender of Sturtlow to me before Mr. Philips, R. Barnwell, and Mr. Pigott, which he did acknowledge to them my uncle did in his lifetime deliver to him.

morning and evening
a green agreement of matter

as the barn owl to a barn
I know my time

Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Sunday 21 July 1661.

We do it the old-fashioned way again: 
pen and paper (not GPS), you looking at 
the map and me writing down the turns 
I should take when I have to drive you

to and from early morning surgery
next week. I recall an evening
over two decades ago when we 
were new in town, leaving the car 

dealership— You drove the rental, 
slowly leading the way so I could follow 
in the just-bought blue compact car, lights 
blinking on in row houses that we passed. 

It wasn't my first time behind the wheel, 
but my first time to drive in this new country 
of four- or more-lane highways and unfamiliar
street signs. My heart did its best to keep 

from pounding or being flustered, to not
be distracted by fast traffic. We pulled into
the lot of our new apartment. I loved how you
smiled, how I was proud to have done well.

There was that dream in which 
I led my white-haired mother 
out of a labyrinth of spears—
we crouched behind boulders
as spectres patrolled the field.
When I woke, I was so sure
it meant her coming death.
But when I think about it again 
now, and remember how her face
shone as she looked back at me,
I'm not so sure anymore who was
the guide, who was being led.

They are so sweet 
and dark, down to the stone

in the center of their bellies.
Touch them and you come

away with sweetness
you can name as a color:

cherry-sweet, love-sweet,
tipple on the tip of your tongue.